Halloween at the Museum

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Not scary, just big.

On our way to the museum's Halloween party, Ernie announced he wasn't afraid of Halloween at the dinosaur museum. Of course not. His aunt had made him a spectacular dinosaur costume out of sticky stuff from the Scrap Box and a gray sweat suit. He looked magnificent. And there was, of course, candy to be had.

After a brief tussle with some stressed-out coordinator at the door, we hurried along the corridors of the museum. The usually fuzzy, feathered, or scaly stuffed creatures lining the hallways seemed particularly ominous and scary. Even the stuffed bunnies looked scary.

At one of the activity stations, volunteer Ann Gonzalez explained to me what the Exhibit Museum's Matt Linke used to create comets: liquid carbon dioxide, dry ice, dirt, sand, gravel, crystallized ammonia, and alcohol. Multicolored glitter simulated the comet's metallic content. The end result was really cool, a glowing, steamy mass of bizarre ice that we unfortunately couldn't take home because it just melts.

At a station called "The Mummy Unwrapped," Ernie and I filled a sheet of paper with hieroglyphic stamps. We spelled out his name, used other stamps to decorate the scroll, and sealed it with yet another stamp.