Thursday, September 25, 2003

Blogabowlatorium

The Blogger team went on a field trip this afternoon to San Francisco. We started off by going bowling at Presidio Bowl. I was very inconsistent for a while -- spares alternating with absolute nothings. But by the end of the second game I felt noticeably better. I actually kind of wanted to keep going. It was really pretty fun. I don't think I had been bowling for at least 4 or 5 years.

After bowling we went to the Exploratorium. I had never actually been there before and it was awesome. We only had about 2 hours there, so we couldn't see everything but I just had a great time playing with the stuff we did get to. The sound section was pretty cool. They had a keyboard that you could switch to different types of scales and tuning systems. And there was a computer with headphones and a microphone that would play a tone for you to sing and provide a very precise chart of exactly how off and wavery you were (that was not an ego-booster for me). I was expecting to see some sort of Shepard tone illusion there, but couldn't find one. The animal section was neat, too. They had living chicken embryos that you could see, cow's eye dissections (we missed that, unfortunately) and a decomposition exhibit. (This was a little terrarium where they'd periodically toss in a dead animal, mark a date on the outside, and leave it there so we could watch bugs eat it up. Weird, but strangely interesting.) One of my favorite things overall, though, was probably the momentum machine, which basically just involved spinning around and getting really dizzy. I've been waltzing so much for the last five years that I don't get properly dizzy very often. This thing sure did the trick, though. It was great.

All that, and then a few hours of Irish tunes tonight. Long day, but fun.

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