Day #31 - Holiday Lights

Every year, from the middle of December forward, the process of driving anywhere at night includes trying to find as many houses with lights as possible. Why? For nothing other than hearing Marisa repeatedly say, "Wow. Aw-awesome. Yay!"

It doesn't matter to her if the display is in all realities, quite lame. She just likes the lights. If the display is impressive, Marisa is likely to clap and cheer in addition to her typical exclamations.

With every holiday, things are magical for Marisa. Always.

Day #30 - State Store!

I didn't do anything very productive today other than go to the State Store.

Usually when I go, I get only one bottle of whatever because I'm heading home from work and need to take Public Transit. Don't want to look like a wino on the trolley.

This time I was with my dad though. So I got everything I needed and a couple things I wanted. 6 bottles for me, 2 bottles for my father.

I guess it wasn't a huge trip, but it was nice to refill my stock of liquor.

Day #29 - Remembering Mischief, round 1

About a year and a half ago, some kid mailed his Flat Stanley to the Franklin Institute. All mail not otherwise directed goes to Finance to be opened. When they saw what it was, Finance sent it to Museum Programs. Museum Programs then directed it to Workshops. Then the Workshops Manager assigned the project to me. 

So I set about taking Flat Stanley on adventures. One of a kind experiences he could only have at the Franklin Institute.

We went to all of the most notable exhibits and activities that people want to see when they visit the museum. And we used our secret access to get a guided tour of the Curatorial Vault that has items like the Wright Brothers' Airfoils and shards of the Hindenburg. The Franklin Institute's Chief Astronomer, Derrick Pitts, even gave Stanley a tour of the Observatory and showed him how to use a telescope.

In the end, I made Flat Stanley play with electrical charges on the Van de Graaf Generator.

Day #28 - Rube Goldberg

I know a 4 year old who is obsessed with the building of Rube Goldberg devices. He's been that way since he was roughly 18 months and started watching videos of them. Everyday he builds several. Some very simple domino effect style but most are actually quite complicated. Anyway.

Pulled from the web: "A Rube Goldberg machine, contraption, invention, device, or apparatus is a deliberately over-engineered or overdone machine that performs a very simple task in a very complex fashion, usually including a chain reaction."

I grew up watching a certain chain reaction video at the museum. I always watched it even though it is actually about 35 minutes. When I was older, I bought a copy of the video and would randomly put it on at home. Der Lauf Der Dinge was made in 1988 in a warehouse by two Swiss guys. If you've never seen it, check it out.

Since I One of my more recent favorites is this one from 2D House. I love it because of all the photography and camera elements.

Day #27 - Sometimes I don't like the trolley...

Sometimes I don't like the trolley...

This morning I needed to get to work a bit earlier than usual for the All Staff Meeting. So I left the house about 10 minutes before 7. There was supposed to be a trolley passing my station at 7:05. Not a problem. I had 15 minutes to carefully walk the four icy blocks to the trolley. When I get there, I remember that I'm going to be stuck riding the same trolley as all the high schoolers... since there is a whole horde of them already waiting. 

They are not the reason I didn't like the trolley this morning.

When I arrive, I notice that there isn't even a trolley at the end of the line (4 stops further than mine) to be waiting for. First sign. So I check twitter. There is a post that says there are issues with outbound trolleys on my route because of a disabled trolley about halfway along the route. Second sign. Okay. Just wait a bit. It's usually pretty quickly cleared. 

So we all just keep waiting. It's getting close to 7:30... normally at this point, the third trolley since 7:00 would be getting ready to go by, but still no trolleys have even made it past us to the end of the line. I call my father an ask him for help connecting to a different route that'll get me into work. When he gets to me at 7:46, I ask him to drop me at the regional rail train station that is close by for the train that should be passing at 7:51. We get there just as the train pulls up so I run and jump on. 

So everything works out and I get to work when I needed to... for $6, when I usually just swipe my bus pass. That being said, just as we're pulling over to the train station, the double trolley that was supposed to leave from the end of the line at 7:01 finally is almost there... it'll only be about an hour and 7 minutes late... it's immediately followed by another double trolley... and probably also the next two rounds of single trolleys. 

As much as I love the trolley usually, there is one thing that really is a disadvantage; if something happens that blocks the route, be it a car poorly parked, a broken down trolley or whatever... it can't detour. It has to follow the tracks. Always.

I never checked, but I would assume the issue with the disabled trolley was weather related. It's not usually good to blend the two pictures below together. It just doesn't end well.

Side note: removing the R# from the Regional Rail Route names was pointless. It makes things confusing. Plus everyone still uses then... even employees.

Day #26 - Attention Span

I've been watching the episodes of Game of Thrones, one at a time. Even for things that I enjoy watching, I just don't have the attention span to watch several in a row. At least not when I need to be concentrating a little bit. 

Tonight while watching an episode on my computer, the cat decided it was going to accompany me. Usually this entails the cat rubbing it's face on my elbow or foot until I bat it away after it becomes annoying. Instead, the cat actually sat there and watched the show. The entire show. Even when she would change position, her eyes stayed focused on the screen. And not just the computer screen in general, but the specific quadrant of the screen that had the video playing. 

Just what we need. The cat learning how to torture people in medieval and barbarically human ways.

I can't even think of a picture that would seem appropriate for this. I guess I don't always have to have an image or anything.

Day #25 - Not present or antisocial?

I'm really not sure what the general consensus would be.

Not understanding how insular I actually prefer to be, it is generally assumed by my parents that if I stay in my room for any length of time to mean one of two things. Either I fell asleep or I'm angry about something. It never occurs them that I just want to be quiet by myself. Usually I get asked what I was doing... as though it is bad to spend time by oneself... as though they can't hold conversation without me... as though I never lived 1500 miles away and only saw them once every 6 months or so.

Usually I'm relaxing in my room after getting home from work because while I am outwardly outgoing at the museum and when out in public, it is really draining. By the time I get home, I'm drained of the ability to viably interact with other humans. I need to recharge my social/emotional battery. Without those (at least) 15 to 20 minutes to read, interact via a chosen medium or mentally process through the interactions from the day, I can not function as a member of the household without being a complete and utter jackass to the other bipeds.

So I ask. Is it more antisocial to physically remove myself from their presence by remaining in my room for the waking hours before and after dinner... or should they be bothered more if I isolate myself by use of my laptop and headphones while sitting in the livingroom with them but not engaging with them in any way?

Physically absense or physically present but mentally absent?

Day #24 - SNOW DAY!

Snow days. They affect every one in a different way. 

Snow days make school children crazy with anticipation of a day off so they can go sledding, have snowball fights... or more likely, sit in all day playing video games.

Snow days make motivated teenagers get an early start offering to shovel sidewalks and driveways for some extra pocket cash while others take the extra morning hours to sleep.

Snow days make municipal/transit workers hope that people will be smart and stay off the roads and inside their homes, even though they are forced to be outside clearing the roads and helping those who venture out and get into trouble.

Me?

Snow days convince me to sit contented by the window watching the snow fall. 

Snow days inspire me to play with my camera even though I will ultimately be frustrated because I can't get the shot to properly frame or capture what I have in my eye.

Snow days create strange concept ideas in my head... which leads to snowman violence. Rest in Peace Frosty.

Day #23 - Travel Itch

Everyone loves the comfort of their home, but I really enjoy traveling away from home too. There was a period of time where I was traveling frequently, but it's been a while since that was the norm. In early November I traveled by plane for the first time in two and a half years. It was great. I love airports. And on that trip, I got to add two new airports to my list: San Francisco and Chicago's O'Hare. 

What the trip served to do was make me itchy. I need to travel more. I miss the process of traveling all over the place. When other people get irritated by delays and changes to their plans, I just sit back and laugh. 

Once I build up the vacation time, you can bet I'll be using it to galavant around. Having a full-time job and not being overloaded with financial responsibilities is awesome. I'll enjoy the two coinciding factors as long as I can. 

I've got a list of places I want to visit both international and across my own country that gets longer and longer the more I read and look at things. Hopefully I get to visit plenty of places throughout my life without the list ever actually getting shorter.

Day #22 - Spreadsheet Mania

Spreadsheets. Fridays. Every week.

Every week on Friday, I spend the entire day up to my eyeballs in spreadsheets. Reports I have to generate and send out to the bosses and a couple other people to keep them abreast of what is going on in our department.

They're tedious and can be time consuming but I don't mind them usually. I'm very detail oriented and so I like when these things are precise. It's when they are not precise that I get annoyed by them. This week while going through some of the numbers from the beginning of this year to prepare the documents for next year's data input, I noticed some numbers on the sheet didn't match the real data. It's part of my inherited documentation... I took over half way through the year. But now I have to fix it. I can't leave it that way. The numbers are wrong and I can't cope. So here's to being up to my eyeballs in spreadsheets on Monday too. 

Oh goodie. Next week I'll open AND close my week with spreadsheet overload.

At least they'll be correct after that though. Thinking positive.

Day #21 - Liquid Nitrogen

One of my favorite things to "play" with at my job is Liquid Nitrogen. Ever since I was a little kid, I have loved seeing the N2 show performed by so many different presenters. They all have their own style and some use different demos, so it's never exactly the same. 

Commonly we use the N2 to make ice cream in under 5 minutes... the amount of sugar makes it terrifying for parents. At -320°F, we form gigantic clouds by combining the super cold Liquid Nitrogen with hot water. And of course we get into unmentioned mischief with it.

My favorite demonstrations involving N2 would have to be a toss up between the ball explosion, the soap bubble monster and dragon's breath. All are incredibly awesome and can be experienced at a variety of events that happen at or in cooperation with The Franklin Institute. 

Day #20 - Help Your Local School Community

I'm sure I'm not the only one who remembers as a little kid, collecting the Campbell's soup labels labels and turning them in at school. It was an easy way for the school to raise funds through corporate sponsors. Now there are even more companies that do that sort of thing. "Labels for Education" and "Box Tops for Education" are things you can find on many of the products that (at least in the U.S.) we all use everyday. 

Not everyone has a kid in their local school and that could make it seem creepy to volunteer actual time to help out, but collecting these labels is an easy way to do something for your community. If you use products that happen to have any of these labels, cut them out and pass them on to local schools.

Honest. Little by little, it'll make a huge difference for the kids at the school. Every bit helps.

Day #19 - Dead Things

I've always had a strange fascination with dead things. Maybe it's because I was apparently conceived the night my parents went away to a funeral. Maybe it's because I grew up with a cemetery on the other side of the back fence. I don't know.

Although, I guess I should clarify what I mean by "strange fascination with dead things." I not talking about necrophilia. I didn't get involved in a career that deals with corpses. And I don't sleep in a coffin... nor do I ever plan to.

But every time I take some time to look back through my pictures, whether on my phone or the computer, I notice just how many times I have taken pictures of a dead animal that I've come across. No seriously. It's definitely not normal. I mean there are probably some people who would be concerned with the pictures. Over the years, I have taken a lot of pictures of dead animals. Hell. I have a ridiculous amount of those pictures on just from the last year alone. (Of course, a bit of normalcy, they still don't even make it to 1% of the pictures I take over all... so it's not the only thing I photograph.)

If it's so commonplace of an occurrence for me though, why did it come up in my head to be the entry for today?

Today, I was quite disturbed as I was leaving for work. I turned towards the backyard where the dog was to say bye and I noticed she had something hanging out of her mouth and she was chewing on it. At first I was simply befuddled. What was she eating? Then I thought she had a mouse that one of the neighborhood cats (or her cat) had killed during the night time hunts. Then as I got closer and asked her what she had, she dropped it to the ground and started to move away. That's when I noticed the larger object on the ground in front of where my dog had just been. It was a dead squirrel. What had she been chewing on? The arm that she had ripped off of the squirrel's body.

So I grabbed a shovel from beside the gate and went into the backyard to scoop the squirrel up and deposit it into the trashcan so that the dog didn't try to keep eating it. Gah. I'm more grossed out than when dog #4 would roll in every dead animal it could find... leaving a matted mess in his fur and setting himself up for the torture of being bathed.

Of course I followed through with my obsession and there are pictures of the squirrel, sans an arm, laying on the shovel before it was disposed of. The squirrel, not the shovel. And despite the fact that I regularly decide to share the pictures of dead things that I find and photograph on a variety of social media avenues, I'll refrain this time and not make you want to loose the contents of your stomach. Even I think the dead squirrel was a little to gross to publish. 

Day #18 - Re-re-re-reading Books

It's getting close to the end of the year... well, close enough to know that I'm not going to make the goal I had set at the beginning. I had plotted to try to read a book a week, well, an average of a book a week.

At the beginning of the year I was doing pretty well. First three months actually, I had read about 13 books. Then I got busy with work and so the pacing slowed down. Then I was still busy at work and I needed more sleep, so it slowed even further. I was still consuming pages of books, but just not as fast. See, I was zoning out or falling asleep on my commute in and out of the city every day rather than absorbing chapter after chapter. Not the worst thing in the world to happen. But still a little disappointing.

I had also wanted the books to be new books. Titles I hadn't read yet. So that also put a crick in the goal of a book a week. 52 new titles.

I should have known it would be a doubly daunting task. I mean, there are certain books that I just love to read again. And again. And again. If I like a book, I will re-re-re-read it so many times that the binding goes weak. And since I also love to read books that are a part of a series, that means I re-re-read the entire series whenever I want to read just a part of the series. Each time I catch something I don't remember noticing or understanding the last time I read it. Or I simply remember a detail of the plot that I had forgotten. Some of those re-re-reads also got in the way of my goal of a (new) book a week.

So with only about four weeks left in the year, my new book count currently stands at 28. Maybe it'll get to 29 or 30 before the end of the year, but it won't get much closer to the goal of 52 this time.

There's always next year, right... then again, I am already itching to re-re-read a couple of series that I have particularly enjoyed reading before.

Day #17 - Routine Torture

The cat that lives in our house is a pain. It finds new ways to irritate my father and I on a regular basis.

The cat's tactics:
- shoving its butt in my face.
- catching mice outside and bringing them into the kitchen and letting them go.
- running silently up (or down) the dark steps in front of me so as to make me trip.
- laying on the very clothes you are trying to put on for the day.
- holding secret hallway meetings with the dog.
- climbing onto the roof of the house and then complaining about the jump down.
- attacking my feet while I sleep.
- prolifically cuddling with and rubbing against my feet whenever it finds me barefoot.

Since the cat bothers me, I torture it back. Nothing illegal or cruel, just obnoxious.

My tactics:
- flicking the cat in the face with my toe when it is trying to smootch with my foot.
- throwing objects in the general vicinity... like tissue boxes.
- meowing at it until it comes over and then ignoring it.
- locking it in the basement. (Not cruel. It's got food, water and the litterbox down there.)

But the other day I found perhaps my favorite way to mess with the cat: make it look ridiculous. I discovered that if I take pictures of it on my phone while using the flash, the cat goes cross-eyed in the picture. The best part? The dumb thing doesn't try to get away or ever avert its eyes. Just keeps staring right at me.

Cross-eyed cats look ridiculous.

So naturally I took several pictures of the cat cross-eyed and laughed my head off.

Day #16 - Giant Tinkertoy Surprise

Every year around the holidays, both Thanksgiving and Christmas, the museum (The Franklin Institute) opens up the space typically used as classrooms for some extra programming. Which programming would that be? Giant Tinkertoys!

It started out as just Giant Tinkertoys, but now we also bring out Imagination Playground and Keva Planks to make three sections of what has been dubbed Creation Station. Visitors to the museum love it. Members come despite the crowds these weeks because of it. All of them wish it was available regularly. 

So we put out these Giant Tinkertoys and the only rules set forth for the visitors are: share, be careful when building... and most important, clean up what you play with. Simple and precise. Most of the visitors have no problem following those rules. In fact, a vast majority of the parents are happy when they come in and we tell the kids the rule about cleaning up when they are done. They turn to us with a smile and say "those are the same rules we have at home!" Of course we still get some stinkers who hoard extra pieces, build gigantic structures, make a mess and then at their parent's urging, simply walk out. So we have to step in and restore order, enforce sharing and of course, disassemble and put away the pieces. It keeps us busy. 

Generally the things that kids build have little resemblance to what they identify it as when their imagination runs away from anything our minds can visualize, but they're having fun and so you just nod your head and smile. Then there are the meathead kids whose imaginations only take them as far as putting a wheel on both ends of a long rod and pretending to lift a weight. It all gets very repetitive when you're working as the supervisor in the room. But sometimes, every once in a while, kids (or kids and their parents) will get really creative and build something we've never seen before.

Today (err, yesterday, because I'm posting this late) one of the volunteers came over and tells me the group in one corner is building a giraffe. At the time, it resembled nothing of the sort and I responded with, "Sure. I'll reserve final critique until they're finished, but currently that looks nothing like a giraffe." So we continued with the afternoon, asking what people were building and picking up pieces. It was right after they attached the head, I turned around and said "Holy cow! It's a giraffe!" We started laughing with the two ladies and the 10 year old girl that were working on it. They weren't done yet, but it certainly was a giraffe. By the end, they had even built a tree to help support the head of the giraffe so that it wasn't eternally drinking water... and so that the giraffe could have some "leaves" to eat. (Completely irrelevant, but these ladies made sure to take apart and put away what they had played with before departing, because... that was the rule they were told when they entered the space.)

Imagination isn't just for small children.

Here's a picture of their final construction:

Day #15 - New Traditions

I don't really go for spouting off things that I'm thankful for. I'm okay with people making the assumptions that I'm thankful for the basics: having a roof over my head, food to eat, a job to do, people who care about me. Why? Because I am. There are, of course, other things I'm thankful for, but I like keeping information like that to myself. Otherwise I might not seem like the emotionless robot that I prefer people view me as.

However, it does kind of bother me, some people's reactions after they spend a few hours talking about how thankful they are for the things and people they have around them. Looking for sales is understandable, everyone wants to save money, but do they really have to stand in line for hours or days for another television set? Of course, no matter how much I or anyone else scoff, it's not going to stop people from buying into the (sometimes violently) competitive, consumer culture of Black Friday. So whatever.  

Instead, I'm going to start a new tradition. 

Thanksgiving is going to become just that. I'm going to give thanks for the abundance that I get to enjoy by giving, not back... just giving. Rather than buying something that I don't really need, I'm going to give the money to a food bank. That way, someone benefits. I think my wallet will be able to handle it.

I challenge some of you to do the same. Buy the item if you want, but think about also passing along some of your luck.

If you're in the Philadelphia area, a great food bank is Philabundance. They have lots of locations and are super involved in the greater metropolitan community. If you're a bit further out and don't know of a group in your area, plug "food bank" and your city/town into the Google and see what comes up. 

Don't really have the finances that would allow you to give in that way? Volunteer a couple hours at a soup kitchen and help serve meals to people. 

Find someway to give.

Day #14 - "Americans" excel at two things...

"Americans" excel at two things like nobody else...

Every year, on the last Thursday of November, people across the country get together with friends and family to take part in a feast of (usually) epic proportions. Wide varieties of foods are consumed in mass quantities. Before tucking in at the table, people post ridiculously cliché pictures to social networks of their turkey, which they assume looks drastically different from the turkey that their neighbors and everyone else are pulling from their own ovens to put on their own tables... even though they don't.

Then as though they forgot the lessons they swore they'd learned last year, they load up their plate with 3x as much food as can fit. They eat themselves into a stupor... and that's before they make one sucker clear the table and switch the plethora of dishes from dinner food to dessert. Then once again they pick up their forks to shovel any number of different kinds of pie into their open mouths.

This is when the post meal posts begin. People blame tryptophan they've been told is in turkey for the coma like state that their digestive tract forces upon the rest of the body... but it's not tryptophan that renders them incapable of getting off the couch for the next several hours. It's the amount of food they pushed through their lips. Did they truly even taste the food?

Every year, days... weeks even, are spent preparing for this day. People start enumerating the things they're thankful for. The love of friends and family, a roof over their heads, clothes to keep them warm, their health (or relative health), the list goes on. Everyone speaks of how much they have everything they need to be happy.

And then the store advertisements come into play. People are convinced that it's not enough to be contented with shelter, physical nourishment and emotional comfort from loved ones. They need the latest gadget. The newest toys. Forget that they don't use the ones they already have. Forget that they don't have the money for it. They believe the commercials that tell them that every minute in which they don't have a particular item in hand, they are missing out on something great. And so they stand in line for the "door buster" deals that thanks to peoples' greed, completely live up to their names. Hordes of people, quite literally, bust doors down to get one of the perhaps 5 items that the store actually has in stock for the items with "bargain" prices that have been advertised to be available, IF ONLY one is willing to go shopping and fight through crowds... right after they finished talking about how they have everything they could ever need.

Gluttony and greed. Our compatriots really do excel at those two things. It's a bit of holiday irony really.

I refuse to buy into it. I can still move after dinner and I don't feel compelled to rush out to a store and buy things.

Don't worry. I'm not dumb enough to believe I'm the only one either.

I don't have a picture to attach to this post. Didn't take any pictures of my meal and I wouldn't post them even if I had.

Day # 13 - Braiiiiiins!

People and scientists have been studying the human anatomy for so many years that one would think that they'd have it all figured out by now. Luckily for the human spirit, this is far from true, but there is one part of the body that they're only starting to really figure out how things work: the brain.

And yet, as much as scientists and doctors may know about the body and it's different parts, regular people often know next to nothing.

Enter exploration... we do lots of dissections with students, campers and visitors at the museum. Over the years I've led people in dissecting eyes, hearts, owl pellets, worms, frogs, rats... but with the impending opening of our exhibit on the brain, we've been starting to prototype workshops that feature a brain dissection as an activity. So far, so good. It's neat to look at the different structures of the brain while holding it directly in your hands... despite spending years with a variety of brains in jars at one of the demonstration carts.

Mmmm. Brains.

Day #12 - Less Than Awesome Advertising

There are many hidden areas in any museum. At our museum much of these areas are used as storage for the many programs that operate throughout the year in the public view.

Being that we are usually planning and presenting programs in overlapping time periods, its not surprising that things often get put away in a jumbled fashion.

Recently, a coworker was given the task of condensing one of the areas that had belonged to someone who no longer works at the museum. While she was a lovely person and a great resource, she was also a bit of a hoarder. So there are many aisles of things that don't actually need to be kept.

Among the materials from workshops that she'd run back in the late 90's, Ryan found the gems pictured below. Match books that were hallmarks of the tobacco advertising of the time... but the fact that the matches within were used by children is what surprised us. They were probably free and that's probably why they were used within the workshop, but still. Kind of odd to expose kids to these messages. I'm glad that advertising has changed its angle a bit with regards to smoking and anything connected to it... because, really, we've got to do better.

I really should have gotten a shot of the pictures that accompanied the messages on the front of each matchbook.