a night at the museum

Before I regale you with stories of darkened halls of skeletons and creepy spiders, I wanted to tell you guys that I really appreciated everyone's comments on my last post. It reminds me that there are lots of people with good hearts in the world... and that I have lots of friends that I want to be more like in that way. So, thanks for that.

Now...

Robbie and I spent some time working at the Natural History Museum on Saturday night for a Smithsonian Sleepover. Apparently sleeping over at museums is a thing that people do. For work I help with public programs that are put on in different Smithsonian museums, and I think the sleepover is one of the coolest programs that we plan—kids from all over the place come and do an elaborate scavenger hunt in the exhibits, and then they sleep over in the ocean hall at the end. I volunteered Robbie to come with me and he actually had a really good time (despite previous grumblings of "Do I have to go to all of your events that you work at?"). I was in charge of face-painting in the insect zoo (to be camouflaged like the bugs, of course) and Robbie helped people make amulets in the mummy hall. We had a lot of downtime and we spent some time exploring the exhibits near our stations. My favorite was checking out Bone Hall in the dark with just our flashlights... it was really creepy! I'd recommend trying that out sometime.

Robbie really has the best stories of the night, though. He is much more of a conversationalist than I am (shocking, I know) and he was finding out all kinds of things about the families coming through. Apparently one of the families that came in has a show pig whose talent is barking like a dog. Robbie can confirm this—they showed him a video of their pig running around in a circle and barking. I am grateful that there are families out there that have room in their lives for barking show pigs. Bless them.