Expedition to the R.O.M.

This day definitely ranks as a good day. Erika came home surprisingly early from her film shoot, coming home at about 4am this morning (was expecting 9am or later). I got up a few hours later, and took Vanessa out to the venerable Royal Ontario Museum. I gave her the choice of either going to the Science Center or to go see Dinosaurs at the ROM — she chose dinosaurs. It’s funny, we visited the place about a month or so ago, and I figured when she said she wanted to see the dinosaurs, she’d want to see the actual dinosaur exhibit, bones and all. Silly me. She actually wanted to see the animated Maiasaur exhibit, where kids get to slap a button on a console and a 10ft high animated Maiasaur appears doing such things as drinking water, running, snorting, etc. While visiting the ROM, I had the strange feeling of time both standing still and moving forward at once. I’d swear that nothing has changed in the old dinosaur exhibit since I was a kid — and that’s a long time ago now. The mannequin of the archaeologist putting a dinosaur bone in a cast has been around since the 60’s I’d swear, and I suspect it may be even older. On the other hand you have things like the Maiasaur exhibit, the “Bat Cave“, and Inco’s “Dynamic Earth” which are relatively new (and both of which Vanessa loves). I remember when the ROM was a real Victorian-style institution, with standardized rows upon rows of stuffed animals, birds, butterflies and bugs of all descriptions in glass cases. The current version of the ROM is much more fun for kids, though it’s lost something its haunted, almost hallowed nature to me. This was the ROM that used to have the outdoor Ancient Chinese Garden which is frozen like a fly in amber in one of the stories from Alice Munro’s “The Moons of Jupiter“. Am really glad that Vanessa enjoys herself there, and will look into getting a family membership next I head there.

Interesting side note: finally read my personal emails from Friday and it turns out that my Frantics Web site has been selected as a Yahoo! Canada site of the week. Neat! 😉