January 1 2015

Besides being New Year's day, this is also Steven's birthday.  Steven, Ayla, Julia and I are going to go to Boston today to visit the Museum of Science to celebrate.  We have some passes to get in, and are hoping to see Kaileigh working while we are there.

We look for the science discovery center, which is past the gift shop and down the stairs.  This is where Kaileigh is working, giving the children the opportunity to be scientists.  The nice thing about this lab is that it is free, if only you can find it.  It is set up for school aged children, but adults can stop in to see what is going on.

Today's lesson is on chemical reactions.  There are three children seated at a table before her, all wearing eye protection, and listening closely.  She asks them what they know about the subject, and  jumps right into an experiment.  She shows them baking soda and citric acid, and asks if they are familiar with these two substances.  "Do you know that gummy worms are coated with citric acid and sugar?" she asks.  I love the way she relates it to something they are familiar with.  They put baking soda and citric acid in test tubes, and look to see if there is anything happens.  Nothing yet, but once they add a few drops of water, it starts fizzing!  There is the chemical reaction they were looking for.  The kids put caps on the test tubes and watch as they pop off, flying high into the air.  They do it over as many times as they can, delighted each time the "rocket" flies off tube.

After she is done with that demonstration, there are aren't any more kids waiting, so Julia and Ayla pretend to be little kids and do the experiment with her. It is fun to do even if you aren't a kid!

Kaileigh needs to clean up and get things ready for the next crew of kids to come through the lab, so we go off to the gift shop to wait until she is done.  It is a science museum in miniature there!  We play until Kaileigh meets up with us.  She has only a short break, so we join her in the cafeteria so she can eat her lunch.  She shows us where her office is, but we don't go inside.  She has to get back to work, so we go off to explore the museum.  We try to take in as much as we can before Kaileigh finishes up with her shift.

One of the temporary exhibits,  The Photography of Modernist Cuisine , starts off with a hunger inducing photograph of a hamburger expanded up in layers.  It is followed by other appetizing photographs of food in layers, cutaways of food cooking inside of pots, grills and ovens, micro and macro shots of foods growing and in preparation.  My favorite part is the display is the cut away tools used in the photographs.  There is a stove that is cut so smoothly and precisely, I can only imagine the size of the tools they used to cut the metal so well. To see both the inside and outside of the stove at the same time is fascinating. 

We manage to see most of the free exhibits before Kaileigh is done, those that we missed we hope to come back and see another day, hopefully when Kaileigh can join us.  While deciding what we should eat for dinner, we are across from that huge photograph of the hamburger.  It looks even more delicious than it did a couple of hours ago.

  There is a place in Davis Square, near Kaileigh's apartment called The Boston Burger Company.  Josh has been wanting to try this place for a while, so he meets us there with Cass, a friend from college who lives in town.

The restaurant is small and crowded.  We need to wait for a table, but that is fine with me.  It is bitter cold out and my feet are feeling weird and swollen.  I don't want to go back outside right now.  Ayla, Julia and I wait on the table while everyone else heads over to the comic book store to pass the time. The wait was warm and well worth it.  When we get our burgers, they are amazing.  The fries are fresh cut and incredible too.  With seven people at our table, we manage to all get different burgers, even some turkey burgers and a veggie.  Everyone likes their burgers, and we were all in agreement over the house made potato chips that come with them.  They are so crunchy they make your head hurt!  They taste okay, but not as good as the fries, and they are so crunchy you can only eat a few.  Everyone leaves well fed and satisfied and we are ready to make our journey back to Providence.