It’s a low-down thing to do, especially now, when more than a few people are out of work and willing to work for less than they normally would. But I’ve seen worse in the publishing and advertising field.

I particularly remember going in for an interview for a p.r. position at a monitor manufacturer when I was still young, unemployed, and hungry. After a cursory review of my resume, my interviewer told me she’d like to see me write a sample press release for an imminently shipping product, and set me at a desk with a computer and the spec sheet. I diligently worked away, and had a good draft done within half an hour. Then, I went to find my interviewer.

After hunting around for her in vain, I finally found an engineer who told me she’d left about 20 minutes earlier to go “work from home.” Lost and puzzled, I headed home myself. When I finally got a hold of her in a follow up call, she asked me for my consulting rate, told me she’d get back to me, and never did.

However, a month later, I did have a job at a magazine and received a press release from that company. It read suspiciously like  the one I’d written as a “test.”

It could have been even worse, however. I worked for a few months at an advertising agency in Oakland, and the owner didn’t hesitate to remind me that more glamorous agencies, in downtown San Francisco, got much of their work done with volunteer labor. They merely had to create an internship, dangle out the promise of a job in the industry (which they themselves would not provide), and change out interns every 3 months.

He wasn’t lying or exaggerating–from London to San Francisco, we’ve heard reports from people who were happy, nay, even thrilled to be getting experience in such a glamorous field. As for those interns, I know none who ended up with a career in p.r. or advertising, much less for the client they’d labored for for free; and why would they, when the agencies can easily find fresh volunteers with stars in their eyes and a smile on their lips, month after month, and year after year?

It must be terribly tempting for unethical employers to play such tricks with “internships” and jobs which will never be filled, especially when hiring is soft and it’s all too easy to take advantage of job- and career-seekers. As for my part, I’ve been lucky enough to land work with honest companies. And though it’s been 15 years since  I was conned into writing a press release for just a promise, I’m still happy that that monitor manufacturer went under just a few years later.

Did they want a copy of my resume? Well, no thanks, they’d already downloaded it from my LinkedIn profile. How about examples of my previous work? No worries–they knew who I had worked for before, and had passed around the copies of recent work I’d emailed them. Recommendations? Already done, since a colleague of mine had introduced me to the vice president of the division previously.

I had four quick and efficient interviews in the course of the hour, and in each case, the interviewers already knew what they wanted to ask me, asked it, and then dashed out to pull in the next interviewer. It was quite impressive, but a little intimidating, too.

Was what I had posted on LinkedIn really the me I wanted them to see? I’d always thought I’d be tailoring my resume to job positions I was interested in, and the resume I have on LinkedIn is oriented towards consulting work (which is primarily what I want, but still…) I have used LinkedIn as a resource of listing and keeping in touch with all the people I have worked with and/or would like to work with; but clearly, it’s also being used by recruiters to find key employees, too. Perhaps I should have posted a more formal picture of myself, rather than one I quickly took with my webcam! Perhaps I should polish my statement about myself, rather than the quick note I have about my background and current professional interests!

And what else had these efficient interviewers known about me before I stepped in the door? Had they checked this blog, and if so, did my personal life affect their decision? I try not to be controversial, but you never know what might set someone off. Did the see my letters to the editor to a local magazine, which has been cached for all eternity, or did they Google me and perhaps confuse me with one of the other Carolyn Bickfords, like one who was a VP of Marketing–and then wonder why I’d excluded her experience from my resume?

In the end, I don’t know, but I suspect the interviewers’ due diligence will pay off with the right hire. And I wonder how much I may ever need to bring to an interview in the future (besides myself and my personality), given that everything else is already out there to be known.

Anyway, I’m digging it because I haven’t had any religious education on that level. Peter’s gone though Catholic catechism, so he’s less into it. For him, it’s like watching the a remake of a long movie you’re seen before, except this time with the gory Goth parts edited out.

So, we got to the class on Holy Communion, and the pastor is telling us there are pre-requisites to being allowed to take communion in his church. Not having met those requirements, I’m comfortable with staying seated during communion. I told Peter I’m sure everyone else is cool with it, too, but he told me they’re just being polite and feeling sorry for me. That said, he stays seated with me.

The pastor went on to explain that his church has closed communion, that is, exclusive to the church membership and to invited guests who meet the qualifications for communion. Then, he surprised us by confiding that sometimes he’s had to exclude someone from communion, such as an unmarried couple which is openly living together.

Really? Who does that? Well, a Lutheran pastor, I guess! That got some discussion going between Peter and me, and in the end, we thought he was rather cool for willing to be so uncool.

Face it, these days, even in polite society, marriage is considered optional. Who’s pushing it, anyway? If a guy wants to marry the girl of his dreams, his buddies have to mock him for wanting to take up the proverbial ball and chain. A girl may want to marry her boyfriend, but does she really want to be the harpy who rails on about it, when it’s love, not a ring, that will presumably hold you together? It’s so much easier to just drift along, and let the children appear as they may; and when you get bored, drift off in different directions. Your friends are probably doing the same. If your parents are socially conservative, they may tsk, and make you sleep in separate beds when you come over; if they’re not, they’ll probably expect you to move in together, in their house. But, really, it’s not like living together is a big deal to anyone any more.

So, all there is left is a Lutheran pastor, pretty much telling you that unless you’re going to get serious with one another, you’ll have to stay seated during communion. (Next to Pete and Carolyn, whom by the way, whom we all pity for not being able to take communion, not that we would point that out them–however, at least they‘re married.)

So, bravo, for taking a principled stand, especially if it’s not the popular one.

One of the exhibits which has come and stayed are the Kapla bricks, which are little more than short flat pieces of wood, which the museum visitors use to make the most creative constructions. We saw them as a new exhibit in 2006, when Neil’s imaginative friend Ryan joined us and created a castle with a bridge. Since then, the Kapla bricks have moved next a small maze in a room with the Planetarium, and they’re always a hit with my children:

Neil was also eager to see the choice of puzzles in the museum store, and he ended up buying himself a quite inscrutable Chinese puzzle box.

I am always in awe of the view from the museum, which never fails to amaze:

A few days later, I set the children up with an art lesson about Joan Miro. We all came up with impressive Miro-inspired art, all in our own styles. As a conjunct to it, I planned to show the children two Miro paintings I’d seen at the Stanford art museum.

Unfortunately, when we got there, the Miro paintings had been rotated out of the 20th-century art exhibit. Alas! However, I had had the children do another lesson on Alexander Calder the day before (and we have two stabiles and a mobile to show for it). And as it turned out, the museum had an Alexander Calder mobile on display: you can see “The Chariot” here behind the children:

Kelly was very exited to see an authentic art piece based on what she’d learned. She wasn’t as thrilled with the Robert Arneson heads, though I always find them whimsical.

The downstairs special exhibit often includes an activity, so I took the children there to see if there was one with the current exhibit. But the exhibit was very very delicate calligraphy, with no activity (and honestly, a note which seemed to imply breathing near the calligraphy was seriously discouraged). So we had the most fun in the museum store, which had samples you could play with, and with the soft pink upside down Q in the courtyard. The soft pink Q, by the way, is by the very same artist who created one of our family’s favorite pieces of art, the giant diaper pin.

So this museum visit didn’t have all I expected, but it was good, and the Stanford art museum is always worthwhile, even if it doesn’t always have its Miro on display.

I wondered whether they’d relate as middle schoolers or math geeks. By putting them together in the back of my car on the way to San Francisco, would I be subject to an hour of fart jokes, or power calculation? I very quickly learned middle schooler and math geek are not mutually exclusive. Almost as soon as he got into the car, Julian rolled down his window and the boys proceeded to do wind experiments half way up the peninsula. It wound down to an explanation on the science of kitty litter, at which point I saw my chance to insert a geeky fact, and informed the boys that the Middle Ages really stank. That seemed to calm the boys down for a while. Where’s the math in medieval aromatics? After a few minutes, they changed the subject to theories of what you could do with a really long conveyor belt and RC vehicles.

Finally, we arrived at the Exploratorium. Julian set me up as the straight man for a really geeky math joke involving infinity, but I got him back by telling him I love infinity, because no matter how much you add to it, it’s always the same. And, hey, kid, here’s a quarter-shaped Exploratorium sticker, now go play with the science exhibits, why dontcha?

The place was created for kids like Neil and Julian, by slightly older kids like Neil and Julian, so the boys were content. Kelly, happily enough, has matured so she can enjoy playing with the exhibits, too. Here are all three children checking out the sand disc:

Kelly and I drifted to different exhibits, in no small part because neither Kelly (nor I) were up to trying to figure out the equations for sand drawings.

The Exploratorium has a new (to us, at least) section about circuits, which had a table for making circuits. This was like a more advanced version of Snap Circuits, a toy Neil loved at an early age. When I checked in on the boys, they were creating some sort of ueber-battery, having done troubleshooting work to sort of the defective circuits from the working ones:

I was hungry for lunch, but both the boys were still riding on Exploratorium excitement, so I took Kelly over to the cafe to have a bite to eat, since I wouldn’t be able to eat on the way back home. I opened the lunch I’d packed for myself, (which involved the remnants of an ongoing field trip lunch), and discovered a biology experiment. Biology was last year for us, though, so I threw it away, and ate some of Neil’s lunch instead.

Alas, we had to leave at 3, so I could get the boys to Cupertino in time for Julian’s math club. Neil had accepted an invitation to join him, which is like accepting an invitation for a nightcap from a Russian friend. Here’s an example of one of the problems they do for fun in the math club:

You leave the Exploratorium at 3 pm, and need to be at the Cupertino library at 4 pm. Inexplicable construction requires you to reroute your way home through the Presidio, but through some wonder of space, time, and political perversion, you still end up going down 19th Avenue and have to stop at infinity red lights. There is a 10% probability that any one of the car’s 3 passengers (with a 5% probability for the driver) will throw up, a probability that increases exponentially every 10 minutes, but which will delay your trip by 5 minutes for each incident, assuming you can pull over to the side of the road fast enough (if not, add another 10 minutes). Calculate how late you will be, and which passenger gets sick.

Oh, wait, I did that problem. Neil and Julian obviously did it, too, and faster than I did, because as soon as I pulled up in front of the library, they exploded out of the car and dashed away, whereupon Kelly threw up.

After the clean up, Kelly and I stuck around in the library, until closing time, when the math club had to close down, too. I got Neil to admit to being mathed out for the day, so we just went home and watched an old Star Trek episode in which Kirk, once again, destroys a computer.

I still have several passes to state parks which will expire in April, so I decided to take the children to one of our local state parks, Big Basin. I found a hike just about the right length for us, and with an interesting highlight: namely the 3.5 mile hike to Sempervirens Falls and back.

The tall redwood trees are always spectacular. At the park headquarters, we saw a cross section of one of the big trees which sprouted around the time of the Pharoahs. The spacing of the rings gave you a perspective on the scope of history. For instance, right now CSA is just concluding a section on the French Revolution, which is much closer to the present day, than say, the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire.

Neil and Kelly got some gymnastic exercise scrambling on an exposed pipe and fallen trees.

We walked right through the Huckleberry camp ground (and had lunch there on the way back), which reminds me it would be fun to go camping again.

We made it to our destination easily. Neil was unimpressed by the falls. They’re not as spectacular as the ones in the middle of the park, true, but them Sempervirens Falls isn’t 12 miles away from a park entrance, either.

It put me to mind of what one of the predictors of forthcoming economic gloom and doom, Gerald Celente, had said last year. In one of his interviews, he said that as governmental agencies needed more money, they’d start nickel-and-diming their citizens, citing them for new or little-know infractions, raising fees, and playing tricks with taxation. I’d been on the watch for this, and it does seem that I see more people than ever pulled over for speeding, so much so that I now am very careful to stay to the speed limit, no matter how fast those around me are going. But maybe I just see the cops at the side of the road more because I’m looking for them.

On the other hand, other than getting a parking ticket due to San Jose’s enthusiasm about parking enforcement, I’ve yet to see the consequences I might have expected (or that Celente forecast) to years of out-of-control government spending, and the more recent high unemployment. When I go to the mall, the cash registers are still ringing, and people are walking around with multiple bags of newly-discovered goodies. Most of my friends who were working in 2008 are still working today, at the same, equivalent, or even better positions. And during my last Alice-in-Wonderland year, even I was well employed, and earned enough for two years worth of private school for my daughter. The houses which went in to foreclosure are now occupied by solvent families, and we haven’t seen any further effects of Happy Happy Lenderman’s mortgage spree.

I try to keep watching the economic tea leaves, but they’re confusing to say the least. My state still can’t cover its expenses, but the legislature suspects (maybe knows) that it’s much easier to get a federal bail-out, like they did last year, instead of cutting services and salaries. Greece may (or may not!) default on its debts, but would, or could, the U.S.? The debt is astounding, but not debt is too much if you can pay it one way or another. One month unemployment seems to rise, the next month to shrink. I have a new contract which went into a state of suspended animation just as it was scheduled to start: I’m not working, but no one’s really sure the gig is off completely, either. Celente had predicted another economic shock at the end of 2009, but we all know now that didn’t happen. So will it? Or does he go into my pile of debunked pronosticators, like Faith Popcorn, whom I remember for her prediction that we’d all be eating quiche instead of pizza now.

To add to my confusion, today, while I was pumping gas, another person who was filling up, questioned my choice of license plate, which says RLYH8LA. I admitted it is a rather aggro; after all, I really don’t go around trying to offend people. I awkwardly told him vaguely about my last trip to LA proper, which had inspired me to buy the vanity license. Realizing, perhaps, that there was little more he could do to get me to stop being such an LA H8ter, he returned to his car, with its UCLA license plate holder, and glowered quietly at me. Wow, someone likes LA! I thought, so much so that he can get up the courage and question a stranger about her obvious LA hatred! And here, Peter and I had thought the license plate was just the thing to help me avoid getting tickets in LA-phobic Northern California! But I did get a ticket!  So maybe the city of San Jose hasn’t really gone on a ticketing spree, but maybe hired a meter maid who loves the City of Angels, and objected so much to my license that she noted my info even while off duty, and typed the ticket into a computer the next day, because LA H8ters must pay for their prejudice.

So, like most economists, I really don’t know what’s up–or down, and what the future will bring. I paid off the ticket, and plan to avoid street parking, at least in downtown San Jose, whenever possible from now on.

Understandably, I was nervous about volunteering. Going into the local neighborhood classroom to volunteer last year prompted me to pull Kelly out of public school altogether. Homeschooling her instead had challenges, mostly social, so when I got a full-time contract late last summer, I know I couldn’t put her back to the neighborhood school, but when I could afford a local religious school for her, it was a good choice. Still, my fellow homeschoolers (and my tour of other schools) had told me private schools are little better than their public counterparts. Notably, one of Neil’s dearest friends from last Spring was a new, and delightfully bright, homeschooler who had been bullied at his $15K/year private school.

But my biggest surprise in seeing Kelly’s class was how very functional all her fellow classmates were. Kelly, maybe because she has such a straight-laced brother, is drawn to the rowdy, and such is the case this year. But, honestly, the rowdies are just the youngest in the classroom, who like to joke around. Kelly’s still a bit unfocused, as she was before, but she’s in a class of 13, which is less than half the class size of a public school, so it’s harder for her to drift away. Furthermore, I felt like my time to volunteer was something the teacher incorporated, rather than something she needed.

For example, today I came in with a story to read (of my own choice), and a small craft, similar to that I would have brought to a homeschooling group. I brought “The Garden” from Frog and Toad Together, which just happened to tie in nicely with the fact that the children had recently planted seeds and some of them had sprouted and others had not. All the children listened attentively, and then had little trouble putting together a craft I’d set up for them. Then, to my delight, the teacher improvisingly turned the fact that all the children had created flower masks into another lesson, pulled out a poem scheduled for May, and had them all review colors and a new song. In the meantime, during my 1-1/2 hours there, the teacher taught the children a moral lesson, had them review a song, and taught them phonics. While she was teaching the children phonics (in two separate groups), I read each alternate group  three picture books, all of which were attentively appreciated. Oh, and they cleaned up after themselves, and the teacher was surprised when I cleaned up an artspace the children had been working in, even though adult volunteer clean up after children was de rigeuer in both Neil’s and Kelly’s public schools.

In the public schools, it was rare to be able to do more than one picture book a day, given all disciplinary control than had to be put into place to even get through it. And even then, I’m not sure 1/3 of the students could have told you what the story was about, whereas in Kelly’s new school, I think all of them could have.

Having seen snack time twice now, it’s clearto me that at least one parent cares enough to package something personal for their child; where at public schools it was all too often either dependent on what the school gave or some grocery school package like Lunchables or dry Top Ramen. So this school looks even less than a rich person/two working parents family conceit; and even then, that you might be able to think two working parents are indifferent to their children’s needs. It did come across that this was a school where the families cared about their children. It was sad that such families, like ours, could not send their children to the local schools–and that this obviously made public schools much poorer. When I combine our local property tax (which ostensibly pays for the schools), I’m paying $15K for Kelly’s education this year, too, and we’ll be paying about &17K for her next year. Peter points out that in many other areas, the schools may be acceptable for only the cost of the mandatory property tax. But in the public school, the teachers cannot kick out the unready, the disruptive, and destructive; and unlike Kelly’s private school, as a result, they need parent volunteers to provide the parent than can’t be provided legally.

I went to a private college, while Peter went to a state one. We both got an excellent education, but his required more effort (more in the way of getting into the right classes) than mine did. So private education is still surprisingly effective to me, altough I’m still intimidated at the cost of it.

Peter had told me it was huge, and it was huger than that. There were big gadgets and little gadgets, innovative gadgets and dorky gadgets, true blue American gadgets and completely untranslatable Asian gadgets, simple gadgets and complex gadgets, and everything in between, and in multiple iterations. To top it all off, this took place in Las Vegas, which itself is freakishly gargantuan in its scale. We had nice 4-star hotel rooms which were so cheap we could book a separate room for Neil and Kelly in a casino with its own movie theatre.

But back to CES. On the first day (after we dropped Neil and Kelly off at Chris’ house in the hopes we’d get them back as fluent Mandarin speakers), we were somehow still working under the delusion that we might be able to spend a moment at any interesting booth. We started in the International Pavillion to admire electronic cigarettes, still ignorant that there were about 20 manufacturers of electronic cigarettes (and pipes) at the show, and that all smokers still smoked tobacco. I admired a mini egg-shaped MP3 player/speaker from Singapore, not knowing that a Hawaiian company had already copied the design and begun distribution in the U.S. In the meantime, I (inadvertently) insulted all the Asian companies by taking business cards and shoving them in my purse, instead of attentively studying them before carefully putting them away.

Before I managed to insult all of Asia’s entrepreneurs, we booked it over to the South Hall, where Peter was going to meet one of his comic book heroes, Stan Lee, in person, at the Marvell booth. While he was there, I explored the rest of the hall, and ran across Elvis in the Tiffen booth.

The next day, Peter and I started at the Venetian, where I was hoping to meet up with some of my VZW peeps, but they had been locked up in some private rooms to do penance by talking with journalists. Alcatel Lucent showed off LTE (fast true wireless 4G) nearby, and I agreed it was fast. Then we returned to the Las Vegas Convention Center, which was obviously where the show show was going on.

OMG, was there ever a lot of 3D TV. You could have your old-school 3D TV with paper glasses, or the more sophisticated 3D TV with expensive IF glasses. Or you could have a special lens that would create a holographic effect. There were 3D games and 3D TV shows and 3D movies and they all looked stunning. Wisely, the manufacturers did not provide seating in front of their 3D screens, nor any media which played for longer than 3 minutes, because only sore feet and a break could tear many people away from those screens. As it was, Panasonic had a 52″ 3D HDTV which was permanently blocked by gawpers.

I tore myself away from the 3D effects long enough to have my moment as an insufferable wireless geek. Intel was showing off a VoIP phone (another ubiquitous technology at this show), and when the rep pointed out the RJ-11 jack, I mocked it as the vestige of a dying paradigm. Peter decided it was time for us to call it a day.

I’d brought a skirt to wear the next day, which unfortunately also made the wearing of heels not optional. Luckily, I chose Central Hall as my first destination. It was where many of the bigger companies were, which also meant many of them had seating for their demonstrations.

The marketing person in me was awed by the level of presentation. Casio had set up a regularly recurring showcase of their latest gadgets like a runway show, complete with a television camera recording the show and putting close-ups on one or several of the screens. The spokesmodel came out, smiled brightly, hit her lines, presented the show, and cued up her male counterpart. He smiled, stepped to the other side of the stage, gave his scripted banter. Product introduction, and a dour model-type in sparkly dress moved down the runway holding a Casio product and making sure all the members of the audience could see the precious object before she arrogantly whisked it away.

And repeat. It was cheesy, but in a delightful Zoolander way, and I loved it. The only thing that could have made it better would have been a Mugatu type zapped in the end with one of the Casio gadgets, but for all I know, that’s the 6 pm show every day.

I just had to find out who at Casio had put this together, so when I ran across one of the actors coming out of the dressing room, I asked her. She brightly told me she’d find out for me, and quickly returned with the information that the entire show had been scripted and produced at the Casio headquarters in Japan, and translated to English. “So where were you cast, in L.A. or Las Vegas?” I asked her. “In Japan,” she told me. Her brightness faded when my eyes registered disbelief. “All of us were cast in Japan,” she said, “we work there.”  The fact that I’d assumed this had been created in Casio’s L.A. office probably shows how little I still have to learn about business in Asia. But that the presentation had been totally made in Japan also explained why one of the featured products was a camera phone which you can only get there.

Canon had a fairly stunning presentation, too. This showed off some of their camera in the context of a wedding, with a professional videographer, a bridesmaid with a handheld camera, and a mother-in-law with a camera, all Canon products. But not only was this demonstrated in a promotional movie introduced by a spokeswoman, the cast–at least those who had wielded a camera in the “making of the movie of the wedding”  video–stepping out to further talk about their designated Canon products, in person, and in character. This all made my agonizingly-produced PowerPoint presentations look very lowly indeed.

In the end, there was so much there, and so much of it, again and again, that it all converges into a memory of wirelessly connected 3D TVs, cell phones, computers, and devices–oh, and there were several devices that did that connecting too, complete with widgets (small single-purpose programs). I remember looking at the new Samsung Omnia II, which had widgets and TV and a computer, and asking the rep when the screen would be in 3D.

It was a sign it was time for me to go home and leave the gadgets alone. For now.

So when Star Trek came to the Tech, I was interested, especially when Neil, even with his very limited knowledge of Star Trek, told me he was interested to go as well.

I thought admittance was pricey. I’ve gotten used to taking my children to museums, and while there’s usually a surcharge for (optional) special exhibits, it’s rare to have to pay more than $10 or $15 for an afternoon’s worth of education and fun. A regular visit at the Tech fits well within this scope, but after having at least two major (and pricey) exhibits which trucked in crowds of paying patrons (Bodyworlds and the Da Vinci Experience), the Tech has learned its special exhibits may be a good way to help fund the regular museum programs. But, still, $25 for me, and another $19 for Neil seemed an awful lot.

That said, Neil and I liked the show. It started with a big room mostly featuring costumes from the different series, and some props from the show. With these was one of the most interesting aspects of the show: how Star Trek inspired modern technology. For instance, cell phones were very much inspired by Star Trek communicators–something that’s not hard to miss, especially when you think of flip phones. Tasers may be thought of as being like the stun setting on Star Trek phasers, since in either real life, or fiction, they work by temporarily paralyzing the muscles with an electronic force. There was a window which mixed real life and fiction by showing historical ships (like Navy cruisers and space shuttles) as somehow evolving into the Star Trek Enterprise space ships.

The next room was a recreation of the ship’s deck, and both Neil and I made sure to have our pictures taken in the captain’s chair. We also got to see ourselves “teleported” in another room which had a teleporter recreation, and see the captain’s quarters as they looked in Star Trek II.

The last and biggest room had more models and an entire wall placing all the major events from all the Star Trek series and movies into a single timeline. I’m not sure I was hard-core enough to appreciate that, since I think of each Star Trek series as something that stands on its own, not as interlocking in a strict sequence. I mean, Star Trek: The Next Generation was a great show, and made rare references to its predecessor, but it was really a different show based on same premise, not a strict sequel. The timeline did remind me how long its been since I watched anything Star Trek. Most of the movies I’d seen when they were in the theater, and that (gasp) goes back almost 30 years. I watched the first two television shows as reruns when I was still in school, but never really got into any of the later iterations, not even Enterprise, even though I really really wanted to like it because it starred Quantum Leap guy Scott Bakula. So, honestly, I don’t really know, or particularly care, about when Captain Jane Away (?) lived, since I can’t name the series she came from either.

Otherwise, we had more costumes, more props, more models, and a quiz game Neil enjoyed and did well at, even given his limited exposure to Star Trek. I vowed to educate my son with the original Star Trek episodes and the good Star Trek movies (II, IV, and maybe VI), but to my surprise, those can’t be gotten at the library, and I have to Netflix them.

I was looking forward to buying a souvenir of our mother-son Star Trek experience, but if I’d thought the show itself was verging on the edge of being overpriced, the pictures certainly were. The only way I could buy any picture of us was to buy a $28 package of 2 or 3 pictures, with an option to add pictures to that at $6 each. I asked if I could just buy a picture of Neil in the captain’s chair for $6, but it wasn’t an option: it was the full package or nothing. Having already spent $42, I couldn’t justify $70 for an hour’s worth of Star Trek fun (even though we were able to add in some fun at the Tech as part of our attendance before we had to go pick up Kelly).

We were the only people attending the exhibit, but to be fair, it we were there on a Monday, the week before Christmas break began. The Da Vinci show cost as much as this exhibit, and that was consistently packed, even though I didn’t consider it that impressive, and it was certainly less fun than Star Trek. So maybe there are more Trekkies/Trekkers out there with more money than I’m willing to part with. As it was, Neil and I had a good time, but I’m glad Peter and Kelly didn’t join us, because it wouldn’t have been worthwile for them.