My secret is out....

Over lunch the other day, a girlfriend pointed out that I needed to have a child so that I'd have someone to hang out with who shared my interests. I stand guilty as accused.

We had the most fun I can imagine yesterday. A leisurely morning, but then a trip to the Smithsonian's Ripley Center to see Jim Henson's Fantastic World. A small exhibit, overall, and crowded on its final weekend, it let me briefly worship at the shrine of a 1970's-era Kermit the Frog, along with Bert and Ernie, Gobo Fraggle, and a variety of characters and props from movies such as The Dark Crystal.

There was a great resource room with books of material for the adults while children could draw storyboards, add features to velcro faces, and play with puppets on a real puppet theater where they could see through a glass panel to a monitor that showed them what the scene looked like on camera, and which was televised to 1970's era tvs in other parts of the exhibit.

I came away inspired to start making puppets, something I've always wanted to do, but hey! Now I have a partner in crime who will work on it with me! My girlfriend is proven correct in her assessment of my reasons for having children....

We left there and went to the Natural History Museum for a quick bite to eat in the Fossil Cafe ("Don't go extinct!") and a quick trip around the dinosaur exhibit, then a quick romp into the new Sant Ocean Hall, and a trip to the gift shop resulting in two more members for the ever-growing dinosaur collection.

What trip to the Mall is complete without a spin on the Carousel? Someone beat us to it on our first trip, but we were able to cleverly wait out an entire cycle so we could pick FIRST and ride the "dragon" -- and there was much rejoicing.

I carried a very tired 4-y-o and his two new friends through the Ripley Garden on the way back to the car, and a very sleepy boy conked out during the ride home. We were just too tired to do anything else for the rest of the day, and it was a quiet evening.

It'll be a tough act to follow, but I think maybe the zoo is juuuust the thing!