explosion of chihuly

Hmm, my intent is to write about things roughly as they are happening, but I seem to be continually behind the times here on Stay Curious these days. Here it is Tuesday, and you are just now allowed to know how awesome my weekend was.

As awesome as it can be with family, of course; they are on their way through to Michigan and Ontario for camping and whatnot. Friday we went to Soda Fountain Square for dinner; good times. My sister took forever with her milk shake, kind of like how she took forever walking last year when it was free t-shirt night at the baseball game and we ended up being too late to get free t-shirts. Went back to the apartment, played a couple games, and did a reasonable job of getting to bed at a decent hour.

That was important because I was taking them to the Missouri Botanical Garden to see the Chihuly exhibit in the morning. I'm not particularly artistic myself, so it's one of those things that I more felt I should see to expand my horizons and crap like that rather than actually wanting to go, but I figured my family would like it and in general I like the garden a lot. The exhibit incorporates glass blowing into the lawns, fountains, and in particular, the foliage in the climatron and temperate house. It was pretty much what I expected, impressive in the scale of the work and every once in a while inspiring an unexpected appreciation for a certain color or shape or something, but basically feeling like a distraction from the gardens rather than an addition to it. I most disliked the glass lillipads put in the ponds between the climatron and the rose gardens. My parents both liked it, and I successfully ran the juice dry in my dad's camera! Unfortunately, my sister didn't seem very enthused, so that's a bummer because I thought she might get into it, but what can you do?

As I am sure you know, the real excitement of the weekend, the reason it has existed for months and months and months, is because it is the opening weekend for the second Pirates movie! The first one is the kind of movie that if it’s on and I walk by, it will take me 20 minutes to realize I stopped to watch it. And have I mentioned recently how awesome Keira Knightley is? Even if that’s not a draw for you (horror of that notwithstanding), what’s not to love about a fun movie with pirates and sword fighting and a feisty governor’s daughter? Obviously, a movie made simply because the first one did well isn’t going to be as good, and in particular I’m not a fan of the CGI creatures, but let me just say that my Pirates craving has been satisfied. And I got to show Julie and my parents a real movie theater; you know, the kind that gives you mints afterward.

Then Sunday kind of gets lost in a blur of seeing church people I haven’t seen in a couple weeks and doing laundry and spending some time with my neglected computer and cheeseball-filled World Cup goodness and being a taxi driver for a certain someone and so forth.

Next up: initial review of Civ IV! Oh, how exciting it is when your package finally reaches Hazelwood, MO. Even Sid’s talking tutorial is worth a mention…