8th April 2006

Posted April 8, 2006

Someone’s birthday was today, and we had a busy day planned. We got up, and after pushing some plans around, figured that we would go downtown to the Children’s Museum because we knew the Varners would really like that, and they were pretty geeked to go and see the Chihuly exhibit, and so was I. The Chihuly exhibit at the Museum is a 40+ foot glass sculpture of individual pieces of blown colored snakelike tubes. It is really just amazing to see, we got some photos, but whether they make it onto the blog is another thing.

We then had some time, until just before 2, to walk around and check out the rest of the museum. I saw some new things I hadn’t before, and especially liked to hear about the new dinosaur that has been discovered and will be officially named on the 29th of May I believe. However, gay name. Draco-Rex Hogwartzia. Draco as in Dragon, Rex as in King I believe, and the last part, a tribute to J.K. Rowling and the Hogwartz academy for getting kids to read? What they hell does that have to do with a dinosaur? Stupid.

At 2 we headed out and went down 37 towards Bloomington to visit the Oliver Winery and do the tour and wine tasting. Being just 9 miles north of the IU campus on a nice Saturday, the place was packed. We were there for quite awhile, from 3:30 - 6:00, just waiting to get up to taste some wine and then to take the tour. Having taken a tour in Branson Miss. of a winery, I didn’t think it would be much different. I was really impressed and learned a ton of interesting stuff, like what the yeast does in wine, what some of the markings on the barrels are, and Bitritrates are.

The scary thing, we did walk out with a case to split among the four of us, Varners got some of the wine that they couldn’t up in Michigan, and we got some of the stuff that just tasted frakin awesome. But the whole experience was awesome, such a great location, wooded, lots of picnic tables and shaded areas to eat and drink, up on a hill with a little pond below, it was very cool. The one wine we didn’t find they claimed couldn’t be had until mid July, Blackberry. But, in the end we got that too, more on that in just a sec.

Then we had dinner reservations in Bloomington at the Irish Lion at 6:30. It was a really authentic Irish restaurant in this very strange old building with a ton of bizarre levels of seating and spaces. They had beer by the yard, it came in this yard tall glass with a stand that was difficult to drink without laughing yourself silly as you swing it around and conk your dinner mates. Justin got a half yard which was as cool, but much more manageable. This place was something Christine recommended when I asked and I was interested in the beer, but the waitress said that they just started doing the beer by the yard thing again, they had a hard time finding some of the glasses. The owners had actually drove to Mexico to get a new supply, I guess they were high in demand.

We came home to 10 messages on our answering, Sarah is a popular gal. We did presents and desert, and then did games (skipbo) and drank some of the wine we got during the day for a couple of hours. I knew from talking to Lori Grubs during the week that she had a bottle of the blackberry, and sure enough, I went to the front door and she had dropped it off. Such a sweetheart and a good guess to boot. Then Justin and I watched just a skit or two of Monty Python before I went to bed at a reasonable time.

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