Well, the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago is seeking to make this a dream come true for people like-minded as myself.  If only I was free to do this – I’d certainly be willing to try.  They are seeking someone to move-in to a special residence they’ve constructed and live at the Museum for a month – all the while capturing their experiences via blogging, videocasting, and social media means.

A blog post on ApartmentTherapy.com shows this picture, as well as more pictures of the living space. More details about the experience, called Month at the Museum, are available on the MOSI site.

Here’s a video preview

FRIDAY

Friday evening, we went to dinner at Kyoto Japanese Restaurant. We went there last year for Jihad’s birthday so it was a great place to go again. Who can not love the fact that you get fire in your face during dinner?  I didn’t get any great pictures, but we had fun.

SATURDAY
On Saturday we were busy just about all day.   We had a birthday party for Jihad at Chuck E. Cheese followed by a Nashville Rollergirls roller derby game.  It was the Music City All-Stars vs. the Tallahassee Rollergirls.

The Party
We’ve never hosted a party at Chuck E. Cheese before.  While I expected the chaos, it was certainly a lot to bear – almost overwhelming! We had about 20 kids total and about 15 adults.  It was crazy! But we had so much fun.

The cake we had for him was a Star Wars cake from Publix – a marble cake with buttercream frosting – good stuff.   It had Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker on top battling it out.

We think the kids enjoyed themselves. We were there for more than 3 hours, and I’d not expected that. The schedule at Chuck E. Cheese is well-planned – we had a party hostess assigned to assist us all.   Time passed very quickly.  Here is a video of Jihad in the TicketBlaster.  He won the largest prize there is to get in there too – a red ticket that gave him 200 free tickets.

After all was said and done, we packed it up and headed over to Municipal Auditorium for the roller derby game.

Roller Derby
This was our 2nd time attending a roller derby game.  We went last year and enjoyed it a lot! So, we’ve been looking for an opportunity to go back.  The Nashville Rollergirl teams are just cool.  There is even a Nashville Junior Roller Derby.  You have to be at least 10 years old to join, so if they’re still around when Kaleya comes of age – we’ll have to see if she has any interest.

Prior to sitting down, we ran into one of the players, Jersey Jackhammer.

Then, we sat down, and watched a great game. NRG won the game 159 to 70. I’m still learning how the game is played, but I have the basics down. Well enough to know when we were doing good and when we were not doing good enough.  Here is a clip of a round or “jam” as it’s called.  We see Rambo Sambo taking the “lead jammer” position.  Then, she circles back around to catch up and ultimately break through the pack to score points for her team.

The kids seemed to enjoy themselves.  They asked questions about how the game was played and even Kaleya joined in with applause when she heard everyone else doing it because of a good score.   It was a great game – during one bout, Rambo Sambo scored 28 pts.  Another player that was fierce was Lady Fury. All the players were great though.

After the game we went down to the speedway to see if we could meet the players; and meet we did! Many of them were still on the floor and we liked how well they interacted with the crowd. We got a whole series of pictures of Kaleya w/ the players and one of the Jeerleaders:

Kaleya with Union-Jack-U-Up

Kaleya and Union-Jack-U-Up

Kaleya and Dramatic Pyrony

Kaleya and Showstopper

Kaleya and Rambo Sambo

Kaleya and Lady Fury

Kaleya and Anita PBR

Kaleya and Maulin Monroe

As we were leaving the auditorium, the entertaining band, Halfbrass, was outside performing impromptu.  Kids were dancing, some of the Jeerleaders were dancing, and the crowd was singing.  See the video below.

A great birthday weekend so far! We plan to go back to their next game on August 7th.  All in all, a great day and now I must go to bed!  However, before I go, here are some things to know

• another video from the roller derby game – the girls being introduced
• see info about all the girls on the team
• Maulin Monroe & Rambo Sambo talking about the sport
• and the whole set our pictures from today are here

We started by having lunch at a small play park near our house and stayed there for about 45 minutes.

Then I thought we should go explore Percy Warner Park. Even though I’ve been living in this neighborhood for over two years, I’d still never been over to it.  So off we went and it was gorgeous!

There is a driving trail that goes up the mountain side that we drove up and when we reached what looked to be near the top, we stopped and parked.

We noticed there was a trail that led down the side of the hill and the kids wanted to see where it went.

You see that the trail goes downhill right?? When we reached the first steep decline, I was going to turn around, but Kaleya wasn’t having it. How shameful is it that a 5-year-old is my motivation to continue Along the trail, there were several people walking and some passed us who had walking sticks. Of course Kaleya wanted to know what they were and why they had them. When I explained, she decided she needed her own set of walking sticks.

We were walking the trials for a couple of hours and it was fun! The hike back *up* the mountainside was not as fun, but it was good exercise. The kids weren’t fazed though – they seem to have boundless energy!

In looking at the park map this evening, I think we were on the Mossy Ridge Trail, described as a 4 1/2 mile trail that “winds up and down wooded hills and hollows & crosses several springs and open meadows.”  Up and Down is right!  We didn’t do all 4 miles though; I’m guessing we walked on the trail about a mile before turning around to come back.  I’m going to sleep well tonight.  We are planning to go back next weekend and explore a different part.

Thanks to my mommy for sending it to me!

rest of the pics here.

This year, they had a rave at the main library on campus, Davis Library.  Classic! They know how to relieve stress from finals don’t they

Here is Kaleya w/ her bestie and you can link from here to the rest of the photos by clicking on the link at the bottom that says “December 2009″

and a video from today

Wu-Tang Lego: Da Mystery of Chessboxin’ from davo on Vimeo.