I'm super-annoyed this Friday afternoon. When I paid to park downtown, I transposed two characters my car's license number at the electronic meter kiosk; so I came back from a visit of an exhibit on European Medieval Magic to a parking citation for not paying. Then I wasted about two hours trying to figure out how to contest the ticket and going back downtown to pick up a paper form before figuring out what had happened.
Bleah.
The morning, at least, was charming. I took the day off and went to the Cascades Raptor Center. I was surprised at how busy it was; I guess I shouldn't have been--I think a lot of schools released kids for an extended Spring Break.
I managed to visit with a friend who works there and got some photos of Jake the Peregrin Falcon. It was Rat Day, so many of the resident birds had that for their breakfast.
After the Raptor Center, it was off to the Museum of Natural History. They have an exhibition of European Medieval Magic that a friend of mine curated, and I wanted to go see it. The most interesting item to me was the narwhale horn: I hadn't realized how they could reach four feet in length. I'd heard about witch bottles before (typically filled with nails), but I hadn't known that they were supposed to represent the witch's gall bladder.
There was an actual love spell, which was supposed to be written in blood from the ring finger of your left hand, and which featured the ROTAS-SATOR square. I found a recipe for soul-cakes, which I'll have to try; maybe I can put in some other design instead of simply quartering them. There was a technology problem with a touch screen, so the most interactive part of the exhibit was a random plinko cascade machine where you could guess what kind of familiar you might attract by where a round chip would land after you dropped it in at the machine's top.
In terms of story inspiration, I might be able to write something at the intersection of soul cakes, Tomtens, and cookies for Santa.
No comments:
Post a Comment