What kind of a sadistic bastard do you have to be to run cupcakes through a salt-water rinse before packaging them?
Wal-Mart, apparently.
And, with those words I say, "I'm back!"
St. Louis was nice. Pictures go up on Flickr (check out my links page for the link) as soon as I get around to it. Actually the pictures are somewhat more disappointing than I'd hoped because I forget that photography is one of those things that should either be done alone, or with a very patient companion. The Boy is not that. Add to that the fact that on the first day the batteries in the camera wouldn't allow the flash to work, and I've got a lot of nasty blurries, but one or two pretty good ones.
First day we went to the City Museum, which is like that park here in town, only much much bigger, cooler, weirder. I don't even know how to describe it except to say that if you're at all physically fit, you should check it out. In some ways, it might spoil it for you to know more about it when you go in, which is why I wonder if it's possible to be wowed by it a second time if you're older than about fifteen.
I don't know that I would recommend the "World Aquarium", which is in the museum (and an extra fee), unless you are either very interested in water dwelling creatures or travelling with someone under the age of twelve who is. Compared to the aquariums at both the Henry Doorly Zoo and the Mall of America, it looks like a marine biology class found something to do with its spare time. Interesting, but not quite awe inspiring.
Next day we went to the Art Museum. Again, not a lot of pictures because in some ways, The Boy and I have decided that art is art is art. Did see the other Monet Water Lilies, which was still so much bigger than I expected, and Degas' The Little Dancer Aged 14, which was smaller than I expected. Chicago's museum had more stuff that made you go, "Woah, they've got THAT!", but St Louis has a nice layout, a nice decorative arts section. Difficult to get pictures because I couldn't use the flash, and there were a lot of WASPy grandparents hustling kids already bored from church around, so standing in one place meant either getting trampled, or listening to Grandma try to interest six year old Jordan in great American portraiture. ("Gramma, can't we see the mummies and go home?")
That night was dinner at a place called Dave & Buster's, which is sorta like Chuck-E-Cheese's for old people. I hope Dave & Buster enjoy the mansions their customers have given them. Still, we were there something like three hours, so I can't say it wasn't time and money well spent.
Next day was the Zoo. It's a huge, free, zoo (excepting the children's zoo, but we didn't go there or the Insectarium). In some places it looks like the 20's, but in others it's a modern zoo. As in, you can see the electric wire that runs between you and the animals, and you really hope the animals haven't wised up enough to decide to jump the wire and the pit beyond.
I know it's sacreligious to say so, but I would love just once to go to an old fashioned cement and bars zoo, just to see what they were like. With London Zoo re-modelling, it's unlikely I'll ever see one, though. Which isn't too bad; I understand why the modern habitats are done and it's much more animal friendly, but something about the masonry and iron work in older zoos really interests me.
Anyway, in spite of the fact that The Boy clings to the idea that he doesn't like animals, he has dicovered rockhopper pengiuns and decided they're friendly enough to warrant buying pengiun refrigerator magnets. I keep telling him, deep down, he likes animals. Why else does he call me out to look at every single cute animal picture he sees? It's not because I get all gooshy about cute animals. Someday, we need a pet, that'll fix him.
I almost forgot, we did the arch the same day as the art museum. We didn't go up, neither of us really cared to, but we were going to go to the gift shop underneath until we saw they had uniformed police and metal detectors. Since I value my freedom over my security, I decided to value my freedom over tchotchkes (my word choice there was so important I spent ten minutes Googling it before I found the right spelling).
Unless you are incredibly scientifically uninformed, or have a ten year old that is, I wouldn't reccommend the Science Center. It's big outside, but it's not much inside. Really more elementary school field trip material. We were also lucky to be there in the middle of the state-wide tornado drill, so we got to see their basment and listen to a bunch of other people moan about how they had to be in a tornado drill. First of all, it didn't take more than ten minutes, second of all, when you come to a museum on an off day (this was Tuesday), you shouldn't expect everything to run like a Saturday.
One woman next to us was busy whining about how "They stopped me from leaving! I was going to leave since this was a drill, I don't want to sit in this basement. Why couldn't they just practice this after the place closes?" Well, stupid, two reasons: 1. When the state tells you to run a tornado drill, you run a tornado drill. 2. If they don't practice it with people, they'll never experience first hand having to deal with your whiney ass trying to sneak out to the parking lot in the middle of the storm.
I was actually impressed that it wasn't the way my high school experiences were. Those drills would last half an hour, we'd all know they were coming, and the safest place in the building (in spite of the fact that we had a friggen fall out shelter and a basement) was apparently the outside hallways of the building. You know, with the windows and glass trophy cases. Safest place in the building. I always said if a tornado ever actually touched down, I would be taking matters into my own hands rather than allow the district to spear me with glass shards.
We got an extended stay hotel room for something like 50 bucks a night and discovered when we got there that the normal price for it's 170 something a night. Thank you, Priceline.com. It had a full kitchen, which was nice, I guess, but we didn't use it. We used the cable. I saw Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for the first time in eight or nine months. I did not know that Stephen had his own Ben & Jerry's flavour. I must seek out and consume the AmeriCone Dream. Interestingly, as I discovered today, it's not avaliable at Wal-Mart.