Off to Italy at 6:00am

I have to write an entry on decaying art.

Today I rebelled against long sleeves, as it has been warm and even hot here. My dad and I split off from the main group to go to the Natural History museum while my mom met up with my aunt Brenda to go to Oxford Circus, which is a street with shopping. The natural history museum here is excellent and certainly better than the ones in LA and San Diego. Even the architecture is gorgeous, though you can see through the windows into the messy research institutions. This museum was the first that taught me about the sheer scale of dinosaurs. As a kid growing up in a world full of skyscrapers I was never impressed with the fossils I saw, but the enormous T-Rex in the lobby showed me exactly why this was the king of tyrants. I don't know what they did with that skeleton and I wish I could have seen it today, but the gigantic diplodocus that took up most of the lobby will have to suffice. I never knew there were so many species of ichtyosaur, nor that they gave birth to live young. Seeing their fossilized remains right before birth was kind of sad. The usual suspects, mosasaur etc were there as well, but one of the best was seeing the only fossil identifying one of the species. I wonder why they even were in different genuses?

I then bought a mini-puzzle of the HMS Beagle for Chris in the Darwin shop. They had an "extract your own DNA" kit in the shop, which I wanted even though I could probably do it fairly easily with a little ingenuinty, but it cost too much.

The birds were too crowded at that time, so we went up the stairs. I can't remember what order we did things in. I think the next thing we saw was the gems. They have thousands of pounds worth of beautiful minerals in one of the most complete collections I have ever seen, including tons of beautiful and famous diamonds like The Star of Africa. They also had the largest gold nugget ever discovered(from Australia), worth over 500,000 pounds. One of the meteorites was on display and I touched it because I couldn't help myself. They also had several moon rocks and a metorite from Mars. The cut gemstones were also amazing. So cool!

We quickly went through an exhibit on the Evolution of Man, but most of the bones were casts. This was the first time I saw Lucy in person, though. There was a GIANT sequoia trunk over 1300 years old when it fell. We bought my mom a beautiful red amber necklace on a sterling silver chain. I got a clear rock quartz-studded chain and an unusual hematite chain. There were also a lot of different and interesting toys, also known as "I'm going to look up how to do this on the internet when I get back". The birds exhibit was sad, as they had some animals that had gone extinct because of us. The hummingbirds were gorgeous, but dead. It does make me sad that they had to die, even if it was for a good cause.

Then there were the dinosaurs, which had a line to get into. The wait was supposed to be 30 minutes but ended up being about eight. I joked in the exhibit that the warfare of the future would involve cloned dinosaurs instead of tanks. The skeletons(and claws) were huge! I have pictures, but they don't show the scale of the animals. Iguanadon was freaky. The club on the end of those dinosaur's tails was huge! Some dinos suffered from arthritis. There was also a really realistic animitroncic T-rex which was almost scary. Dinosaurs were the ultimate killing machines, and now the planet is ruled by little, soft, pink things. There is no way we could have stood up them. There was also a section questioning why dinos are so popular. Well, no crap. Humans have a thing for huge reptiles and cool things.

I also got a notebook with a cover made out of recycled circuit boards!

We went to meet the rest of my family at this point, went the wrong direction and had to take the tube another stop. Finally, we ended up in the right Marks & Spencers. We went to Boots and then went home.

It's interesting how even the vegetation in England is familiar because of how much of it is imported to the United States. I am happy to see local brands and books. I haven't seen any Innocent Smoothies so far; what happened?

Ella is doing cute and naughty things. She was in the blinds and now is in Sharon's bed. She purrs when she's about to "get" someone.