Stones 'N' Bones 'N' Cobwebs

So Wednesday Allie decided to take Brent to the museum she used to work at. The museum, which looks like a teeny little room from the storefront, is actually over four-hundred square feet and houses a slew of exotic taxidermied animals, 4.3 billion year old fossils, glow-in-the-dark gemstones, record-setting bones, pickled sharks, and (the newest editions), a room full of dinosaurs. Needless to say, Brent was wowed by the massive scale and scope of the collection and proved himself gullible to the owner's jokes about Tim Hortons and deer.

Then we got wrangled into volunteering that Sunday while the museum played host to almost four-thousand people on some tour group. We got a free lunch out of it (including beer!), so we can't complain.

As we biked in for the Sunday tour groups, Allie told Brent that the owner had a tendency to over-exaggerate and that there would probably be a lot of people, but not four-thousand. Boy, was she wrong!!!! The whole place was a sea of slow-moving people and camera flashes for the next six hours. We directed traffic, running around with brochures and parking information, we manned the dinosaur room and Brent learned all the right things to say, and Allie got herself in Monday's Sarnia paper with a picture (not shown below because the computer is being fussy) bleahh... Overall, it was an impeccably eye-opening day! We learnt a lot about the museum, about the amazingly optimistic nature of people, and we ran around till our feet felt about ready to fall off... then biked home.

Here are the pictures of Brent's dinosaur experience:

A full-scale cast of a complete hadrosaur skeleton

a juvenile hadrosaur skull

dinosaur eggs (empty, as the xray shows)

Albertosaurus skull

On the truck front, Brent spent some time learning how to bleed out the new brake lines, we learnt just how amazing Armor-All Wipes are (and Allie wiped down every slightly non-shiny surface till it shone), and that acetone is the all-purpose paint remover that cures all of one's overspray worries. Allie was still pissed that the spray paint cans of gloss wouldn't cover in an even shine, so she bought a jug of gloss with the idea that it could be rolled on with the small foam rollers. We didn't think twice that it looked like a sparkly oil slick in the can, and rolled on like cobwebs as it melted the foam rollers. Baaaaad idea. Lesson Learned: always test on a small area first.....

We hauled out the compressed air tank and managed to figure out how to work the foreign-looking object with the spray gun. The sparkliness of the gloss really helped cover, though weirdly enough all the trim and roof-rack bits look like they're covered in cobwebs. Weird stuff. Always test in a small area first!!

Then for an adventurous and exotic dinner, we cooked Allie's family some fried rice and spring rolls.... MMMM..... Brent really has a flair for seasonings! Except ranch....