Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

We did end up doing the museum — the batty ROM / Royal Ontario Museum — visit today as planned. As it contains many photos I’ve placed most of that behind a click-through, so you can “read on” for all that. However, I wanted to start things off with this picture of the three of us about half way through the day that I really like. All of us had a good time.

We left home at lunch time, and I let them stop for Happy Meals — and the little Star Wars toys that came with them — which they ate on the subway ride there, subway rides being something that each of them always looks forward to (McDonald’s too). We got to sit in the very back car which made the trip even better with the good view that comes with that back car.

[Edit/Update: I forgot to tell a story here. When we got off the subway, so did a woman with a stroller. She followed us to the escalator and went to some effort squeezing the big thing, baby inside, on, paying no attention to my "you're not supposed to take strollers here" admonitions. She was right behind us, and when she got to the top, the front wheels of the strollers got stuck in the escalator and the stroller started to twist and flip. An instant later, the grandmother was crushed into the mother and child, and luckily there weren't any more people on the escalator, because the pileup would have certainly fallen onto the baby and pushed it into the escalator until someone hit the emergency stop. After about ten seconds of strolling they managed to extricate the stroller and shot me a dirty look as if to make a preemptive strike on any potential "told you so" comment. Just don't do it again.

But seriously, I hate going out in public because of constant terrible behavior. I find it really hard to be around such ignorance and in another life I'm sure I ran amok from a clock tower or something. But not in this one, don't worry!]

I saw the two of them whispering excitedly (and rudely I suppose) about the guy sitting across from them — who I do not have a photo of so you’ll have to take my word on this — and they came over to where I was sitting and confided that he looked exactly like Fred Weasley from the Harry Potter movies, and to my surprise, they were very correct!

Once at the museum, we twice bumped into guys walking around in huge mascot style dinosaur costumes, but it was a little disappointing because they refused to do anything other than a high five because we were just seeing them in transit as their actual job was to go out on the street and drum up excitement for the museum, which has recently upgraded its dinosaur skeleton area, including among other things, a brontosaurus-type skeleton that’s quite awe-inspiring in its massiveness.

They also paused to do the sandbox dinosaur dig, which I’ve in the past written off as being overly “little kid” (on this trip I totally banned them from all the kids activities, which are a waste of the museum’s space and are better done at home anyway — they’re a lazy cop-out that I wish the museum would eliminate). The guy who was working was amazing — as they uncovered what they found, he explained it to them bit by bit, with an informative and exciting dialogue that kept them inspired and asking questions — and learning. I think though that it’s luck of the draw, as the shy and meek little Asian girl who was his only co-worker was useless, telling not a single fact nor interacting with the kids at all, even ignoring the too-young baby that was doing nothing more than throwing sand on the floor.

The so-called reason we went, and the one that has been most-heavily advertised on TV, and the one that seems to have been the topic of conversation of most people buying tickets, was the rebuilt bat cave. Nefarious has always liked the “spooky” bat cave, so she was totally looking forward to it, but it was a complete let down. On the whole it’s not that different. Mostly it feels more “modern”, with a few more computer screens and an animated ceiling, and cleaner lines, but it didn’t live up to the hype.

[Update/edit: It was dark, and I just did one walk through -- the girls did more -- and having just seen a special on it on the news, I think I may not be giving it a fair shake... The report made it look much more impressive.]

Still fun of course, but the earth didn’t move.

The new “bio-diversity” section on the other hand (which is almost all new material), is absolutely incredible, and if you like “classic” museums — cabinet of curiosity style — you’re going to love it. I definitely did, and it was the section that Caitlin has been pushing me to go see. It’s glass display case after display case, as well as a few interactive screens, and lots of amazing models and taxidermy hanging from the ceiling and even a few live exhibits, and was just incredible, and the girls got as much enjoyment out of excitedly checking out creature after creature (and occasional plant) as I did. Highly recommended and my personal highlight.

The last place we went was the Egyptian area (after going through a “ten commandments” maze and sneaking past a big lecture), and they listened to a brief documentary on hieroglyphics before going into the little tomb room, in which Nefarious ran her hands over all the carvings and translated them, swearing that she could read them, at least in part. Perhaps she will turn out to be a brilliant linguist — but I’m equally happy with the alternative: creative story teller.

Oh, and I shouldn’t say “last”, because as we searched for the stairs and the exit, we entered as room full of nude Roman statues, and the literal quote for the picture below is:

“Look, someone broke off his penis!”

Haha… Anyway, we then stopped for juice for me and hot chocolate for them, and walked down into the subway station where we were told that the trains weren’t running and that we could catch a shuttle bus on Bloor. Rather than doing that — it wasn’t even clear where they were and none were in sight — we just hopped into a cab for the short ride home, with the cabbie ranting about how the bastards never tell you the truth about why the subway is broken and that he is sure someone jumped.

[Edit/Update: All that fun said, I'm so sad that Caitlin is gone until tomorrow afternoon... I sure do miss her already and wish she was back. The support and love she gives me is more than I can do credit in writing.]