My day playing hookie

Ok... they be clear about this... I really wasn't playing hookie. Hookie is calling up working and saying " I don't feel so well. *Cough* *Cough* I won't be coming in today. *Cough*". That was not the case. I put in for a day off and it was accepted. However, playing hookie sound WAY cooler, so we'll just leave it that way. :P

Tom picked me up around 8am and we headed off to the National Museum of he US Air Force. The main plan of the day was to see the Hubble movie on the IMAX theater. It was something that I've been wanting to see for a while now but just never had the change to go see. I knew it was leaving soon, so I just took off a day to go see it.

We got to the museum around 9am. I got tickets to the 11am show and then we went and looked at some airplanes. We first went into the World War Two section. We wandered around there for, well about 2 hours. It was awesome. I like looking at the planes and reading up on their top speed, stories about the specific plane that is on display, other stories that involve certain aircraft. It's also nice to see the progression in the aeronautical technologies. I basically have two favorite aircraft. One of them is in the WWII exhibit. The Flying Tigers was the name of the 1st American Volunteer Group of the Chinese Airforce in 1941-1942. Their main aircraft was the Curtis P-40 which had distinct art on the nose of the airplane to resemble a shark. Like this. I've always stopped and stared at this plane everytime I've been to the museum. And today was no exception. Except this time I took some photos so I can remember it a little bit better.

After the WWII section, I believe we continued on into the Early Years section (we kinda did that one backwards). Again, lots of planes. The coolest one that I remember at the moment, was the giant biplane bomber which had wings which were hinged so they could bend backwards. This was the Martin MB-2.

Finally at just before 11am, we headed to the giant IMAX theater. I forget quickly how large an IMAX screen is. It is big. The Hubble movie was good. I was slightly disappointed since I was thinking it was going to be the Hubble 3D movie, however this was the 'flat' version. And that was okay honestly. Most of the #D effects would have been utilized during a section where they were peering into a galaxy n stuff. They did send an IMAX 3D camera up there during STS-125 (the last Hubble mission), so the repair mission parts would be cool to see in #d for sure. But beggars can't be choosers and I was begging to see this movie, so... I got the 2D version. And it was good. :)

After that, it was noon but we decided that we'd quickly go through the cold war part of the museum. Of course, in order to get there you had to go through another hanger of airplanes from the Southeast Asia and Korean Wars section which was too much for us to pass up. So we went through all of that. And all of the 'Cold War Era'. And since we had seen that much, we topped it off by seeing the Space and Missle section which was in a 140-ft high building. Seeing a full size Titan II rocket is pretty interesting.

By the time we finished the space thing, we oth kinda forgot that we didn't eat lunch. So we were rather hungry. We stopped at Subway. And Subway is good.

After that we went to Mendelsons Liquidation Outlet. I discovered this place when I was doing my circuit-bending hobyy quite a bit. I was looking for a place which sold switches and capacitors and resistors and stuff. And I found it. And whole lot more. Which Tom can attest to. It was hot as heck in there since they didn't have air conditioning. The best part was when Tom thought he had seen everything in the store only to realize that he had only seen the first FLOOR. There was still a second floor to see. It's a good thing it went down that way since on the way to the elevator, Tom found some little kitchen gadget that he HAD to have.

After sweating to death at MLO, we caught some dinner at BW3s where the service was a bit on the slow side. I had managed to get a migraine while at MLO, so I wasn't much for eating (plus, we had a late lunch as well). Service there was a bit on the slow side. We stared joking about growing the potatoes and having to hatch the chickens. Eventually the food arrived and I ate most of my Asian Zing wings and some of my chips.

After we finished eating, I decided to play one of those crane games. Each credit was 50 cents. So I plunked in a dollar and got 2 credits. On the first grab I got a doll with a music box in it. The lil one isn't so keen on music boxes, so I tried to nab a bear on my second credit. And I was SOOOO close. It actually dragged it but then it dropped right before it got to the drop zone. Since I was so close to getting the bear, I plunked in another dollar for 2 more credits. On the 3rd try I completed getting the other bear. But then I still had one more credit, so I aimed for another bear. Which I got. So, out of 4 tries, I got 3 toys. Not bad at all. Most machines nowadays they cram the animals in there so tight that it is nearly impossible to actually grab anything. But in this machine, they were in there fairly loose and the claw actually had a little bit of grab to it. Another thing that was a bonus was that the claw did not engage until you had dropped it completely. Most machine you press the button and zoom it goes down and zip it goes back up. This one I could momentarily press the buttn and the claw would only go down a little bit. And as long as the claw wasn't all the way down, you could still move it right left forward and back. So that helped me as well get precise claw-grabbing ability.

Then we drove home.

All in all, it was a great day.