Yesterday

I would have blogged about yesterday's events last night, but I was either too tired or too distracted by watching The Hobbit production blogs. (Most likely the latter.)  So all I did was write about knitting hexagons, and put this off 'til today.

About two hours of my day were spent at the new science museum in Dallas. I'm actually not entirely sure it's new, but it was in construction about a year and a half ago so I guess it's pretty new. I initially didn't want to go, because of my hate of both museums and science. But alas, my mom forced it upon me because I have next to no science education and I had to attend the outing.

The museum was pretty fun for the first hour, mostly just looking at all the dinosaur bones and the gems. This museum is in current possession of the 3rd largest piece of gold in the world. It was found in March 2010 in Australia I believe, and weighs 51.3 pounds. There's one thing I learned, against my will of course.

When we left at around 4:30, half an hour before the museum closed, we decided to go out for coffee since we were already downtown anyway. We parked by a parking meter, put in enough quarters to last us four hours, and caught sight of a trolley offering free rides. Goodbye cafe-that's-right-around-the-corner, hello old fashioned trolley car.

The thing was still decorated for Christmas, with garlands entwined with colored Christmas lights hanging from the windows on the outside. The seats were made of wood, and the floors were as well. It made quite a racket, hurtling along the tracks. Rebecca misread the map and estimated that the ride would last about an hour when we were contemplating getting out and walking back to the cafe; thankfully, we chose to ride the whole way. Turned out the ride was about twenty minutes.

Unfortunately, that was long enough for our chosen coffee shop to close down for the night, and so we sought out hot drinks and refuge from the cold at The Crooked Tree, another coffee shop. The four girls (me, mom, Mary Margaret, and Becca) sat at the cozy cafe with out ceramic mugs of vanilla chai while Ben and Dan checked out a nearby bar.

And then we were on our way home, after a long adventure ending in frozen pizza and plum pudding for dessert.

Loki's in the Details

This evening I caught sight of some masterfully placed dirt on our driveway. First thing I saw was, Loki!

Do you see it? The horns, the helmet, the robes/ cape, the evil stance? It's so awesome. 

This is a phenomenon called pareidolia. Pareidolia is imagining hearing or seeing something, like a face, in physical stimuli. A common occurrence of this is when one sees animals or people in clouds, or the Man in the Moon. 

And today, I saw a Norse god in a pile of dust. I suppose you could say every day emoticons are examples of pareidolia as well- while most people would see :) as a happy face, it really is just a colon followed by a parentheses. And let's face it (no pun intended)- :) doesn't bear much resemblance to a human face.

(Note: I'm copying most of this information from my sister Mary Margaret's explanation of pareidolia and apophenia at dinner several months ago. See how well the information stuck?) 

Wow- who would ever have thought I'd be writing a scientific post? You must all be shocked. 

I dare you, if you're participating in Nanowrimo, to include an instance of pareidolia in your next chapter. I know I will.