You CAN herd cows riding side saddle

Yesterday was my birthday! When I woke up, Mom was coming in the front door with upside down roses (don't worry, we fixed them, they're right-side-up now) and pink donuts, which I suspect were covered with magic sprinkles because the rest of the day was awesome, and which I happily devoured. I had a snooze-some statistics class at school, then met up with Mom again for lunch at Olive Garden, before heading back to school for my afternoon Forensic Psychology class, which is AWESOME. Things I learned in class:

The first serial killers were werewolves.

How to piss off a psychopath.

How to tell if someone you know is a psychopath (and how to piss them off).

So yeah, super fun class. After school, Mom and I met up again and headed to the Fort Worth museum of Science and History, which was deserted on a Thursday afternoon two hours before closing. Go figure. So, we basically had the run of the entire museum.
We checked out the new aviation exhibit, which was super fun. I built a virtual cargo plane that looked like a walrus wearing a toupee, and could hold a dozen elephants.

The museum always does a really good job of linking their exhibits back to Fort Worth history. A lot of the people featured in the aviation exhibit were Fort Worth natives, and they had a whole exhibit next door about sports heroes that were from the city.

Across the hall from the aviation exhibit was the Cattle Raisers exhibit, which has all sorts of stuff from the 1800s and the cattle drives that were such a big part of the city's history. They had this old domino set from Back in the Day, and Mom and I both looked at each other and said that we needed a domino set again. We searched through the museum store, but they didn't have one, so the hunt will have to continue. We did, however, pick up the Pride & Prejudice trivia game, which is going to be fun. And, they had the CUTEST little germ plushies. No really. Scarlet Fever and E-coli were my favourites. I should have brought home E-coli.

Anyway, they have a virtual reality cattle drive, where you sit on a fake pony and drive some cows on a screen toward a pen. While Mom was distracted, I ran toward one of the fake ponies and hopped on, side saddle, of course (I'm a lady, after all), and started to furiously tug on the reigns. Of course, this just meant that I outran the entire herd of cows and ended up running into the side of the pen. Even so, I managed to get 18 of 25 cows into the pen! I so have this cowgirl thing down.
Then we rounded the corner, and found Disco Cow.

It changes colours, y'all.

Back on the first floor, they had the dinosaur exhibit, where they focused, of course, on the dinosaurs of Texas, like Paluxysaurus and Pawpawsaurus. I can't make this up, y'all. I remember studying dinosaurs as a kid, and when I was in geology class, and I remember Paluxysaurus because we used to go to the Paluxy River all the time to see the dinosaur tracks because I've always been a geek, but I do not remember Pawpawsaurus. I remember what he looked like (a spiny armadillo, basically), and I remember that spiny armadillo-saurus was one of my favourites, but never knew his name. Is it weird to call a dinosaur Pawpaw? Isn't that what little kids call their grandpa? They should just call it Granpappysaurus.

Anywho, they had a casting of one of the dinosaur tracks from the Paluxy River, with a sign over it that said, "Can you fit inside a dinosaur track?" in a very taunting fashion, so, of course, I had to climb into it. (They told me to!) And I totally fit into it. Sort of. I kinda looked like a kid sitting in a washtub. But I did fit, and it was pretty comfy, too. All I needed was some bubble jets and a martini, and I would have been set.
Next to the dinosaurs was an exhibit on the Barnett Shale, which was a "4D ride", which means that we may actually have time traveled. Which means, I'm a time lord, y'all! Awesome.
Anyway, the ride was actually really fun, and they had an entire drilling rig on the other side of the doors where you could poke around and play with nuclear energy and electric windmills and stuff.

After the museum, we went for some dinner sushi, then headed to Border's book to pick over their bones for any remaining morsels. I picked up a Star Trek novel, Star Trek: The Art of the Movie, and two language learning tapes for Croatian and Armenian. Because you never know when you'll need to know how to say, "How much for purple wig?" or "I totally didn't know that was a Viking burial mound" in Croatian. (Were there ever Vikings in Croatia? I've only ever been to Germany, and there was Viking burial mounds all over the place there.)

We ended the day going to Central Market to buy fancy beer and fancy cakes, and there was totally a guy outside playing 70s glam rock songs on a xylanphone. He was singing Satellite of Love when we walked up. It was magical.

We devoured the cake at home, rented a movie on PPV, and vegged out in front of the TV the rest of the night. :)

Tonight, my friends and I are invading the Viva! Dallas Burlesque show at the Lakewood, and tomorrow we're going drinking at the Flying Saucer. I had planned on going skydiving this weekend, but plans had to be changed, so I'm planning that for next month instead.

I promise to return to costuming stuff soon! I pulled a couple of dresses out of the garage to rehab, and will be writing about them soon. Stay tuned!