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i live just a short walk away from the harvard natural history museum. on sunday mornings the museum is free (before 12pm) and it's on this day that i decided to take julie since she's never been there. the place was packed with small children and their shrieking can be heard throughout the museum. fortunately they have short attention spans and it's easy to outwait them before they run away to another exhibit room. the last time i came to the museum was july 2003; the special dinosaur eggs exhibit is now gone, replaced with a biogeology exhibit about the origins of earthly life. the collection of victorian tapeworms collected from high society people is now gone as well, replaced with one of the museum's beetle collections. the coelacanth is missing too, removed to have some cosmetic work done to it. i hadn't been to the museum since my costa rica trip, so it was interesting revisiting some of the animals i saw in the jungle, like the tamandua, the manakins, and the quetzal (although i didn't actually see a quetzal).


kronosaur

beaver

sperm whale

dolphin fish

cock of the rock

quetzal

weevils

beetles

day of the dead

after we were done with the animal side (including the glass flowers), it was on to the rock collection. by this point julie was already all museumed out (she didn't realize how big it was), so we just took a quick survey of the place, including the adjoining peabody museum of archaeology and ethnology. we left to get some food in harvard square. julie was on the phone trying to get somebody to deliver a dryer to her apartment and was literally on the phone for 30 minutes while i waited for her to hang up so we could go eat, testing the very limits of my patience. we went to pho pasteur, i had the beef, she went with the chicken. we weren't shy with the hot sauce, trying to make things spicy to warm up on such a cold day.

after i got home i took a shower to wash off the museum stink (the smell of formaldehyde and children). i parked myself on the couch with a bag of terra vegetables chips and watched the postgame analysis of another new england patriots victory (the last game of the regular season). i fell asleep for a little bit before my father came to pick me up. i had a quick dinner with my family, before i got a return ride back to cambridge.