The Catch-up report

My birthday was really nice – and a bit like a perpetual party.

Last Sunday, we went to Pacific Science Center to see the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit. The exhibit was pretty cool, but very, very crowded. Buy those tickets in advance, and buy them for a weekday. The scrolls themselves were interesting, and I also enjoyed all the other artifacts (coins, clothes, pottery) that were presented along with the scrolls.

After that bit of culture, we walked around the Science Center. Kris checked out the display on camouflage.Nearly invisible, no? Then we hit the IMAX theater for the Egypt movie. The movie had beautiful scenery, and I’m a total sucker for the IMAX films, but it also had a weird sort of explanation-of-the-curse conceit. And Omar Sharif. And not in a good way, either.

Then we headed to dinner at the fondue restaurant. I love fondue! Seriously. I mean, what’s not to love about melted cheese and melted chocolate? So yummy! Here’s a shot of us and then one of the dessert plate (the lighting was a little weird, but we’ll get to that issue below).On my actual birthday, we just played it low-key with a dinner of fried rice at home. Note the flowers on the table (from my mother) and my holiday decorations in the windows (I’ll try to get a daytime shot of those, too).

Saturday night we had a little party at our house, both to celebrate my birthday and to welcome the nomad scholar home. It was a bit of open house, and lots of people came and brought lots of yummy treats. Mike made our traditional birthday cake from this book.
So that’s been the past week, in words and pictures. And about those pictures . . . for my birthday, folks around me pitched in to give me a brand-spanking-new-fancy-dancy camera. So, hopefully, the pictures around here will get a lot better (that is, except for the bad pictures due to operator error). I’d like to do something like the picture of the day, but I’m not sure how that would work with blogger or that I’d truly be able to post a picture every day. Anyway, I’m super-excited about the new camera, but I think there’ll be quite the learning curve with it. I’m planning to study up over break.