Group Outing: Dead Squirrels Exhibit

After church today (and the coffee hour, which featured a Simnel Cake in which nobody found the coin!) a number of us headed off to the Pacific Science Center (right next to the Space Needle) to see the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit on its last day in Seattle. It was a rather gusty windy day, which made at least a few of us (or at least me!) a little nervous after the windstorm a few weeks back. This outing was also one those things that, despite having so many things go wrong, just came out right.

We'd had our group's tickets waiting for us at Will Call, and Nancy had had us in the 1:45 PM block. So a few of us joined the McGraths at what is apparently one of Fr. Pint O'Guinness' favorite restaurants, T.S. McHugh's. (Ours too, but we eat there at most once a year while attending and performing at a huge folk music festival at the Seattle Center every Memorial Day weekend; otherwise we rarely go into Seattle.)

Fr. Daniel had offered "Martha," the church van placed at his disposal, to transport a group into Seattle since parking is often difficult. Kathy took him up on the offer and we gathered a group to go together. One thing after another and Martha's passengers' numbers were reduced to four: Bob and Diane (a couple visiting from Iowa who had attended Christmas Eve and who were present this morning), Kathy and me. Hardly enough for such a large (to me) vehicle, but rather more comfortable than my little two-door, nominally four-seater, 4WD.

Those of us having lunch there trickled into the restaurant. We had a good and entertaining lunch together (interesting -- all the men ordered sandwiches, but none of the women did). Rhonda got some laughs when she said her son Cameron had asked why we were going to see the "Dead Squirrels Exhibit." (oops!)

But we didn't get out of the restaurant until after 1:30, which is the time when we'd arranged to all meet at Will Call for the tickets. For the four of us, Kathy dropped us off at the front door to the Pacific Science Center, which turned out to be on the opposite side of the facility from where we wanted to be. A bit of a problem given that one of our trio was not up to long walks.

Still, we got to where we needed to be just a bit before 1:45. But only Nancy and Paul were there; nobody else had arrived yet! And then we got the next bit of bad news, Nancy had been misinformed or had misheard our entry time. The tickets said 1:15! Somehow, though, this didn't seem to be a problem, and we hung around until everybody had arrived (the picture above was taken long before that time).

We then got in line and entered the exhibit with the 2:00 group. Naturally, the instant I entered I started experiencing some intestinal discomfort and realized I was going to have to leave in order to get to a restroom. Fortunately they had an unadvertised re-entry policy/program so I was able to leave and return, and soon caught up with our (scattered) group.

The exhibit itself? Fascinating! One of the early parts of the exhibit that got my attention os the paleography exhibit, wherein we were shown how a handwritten document could be approximately dated simply by how the characters (letters) were written. (Exhibitor Paul, great job -- and I hereby take you up on your offer to certify me as a paleographer for my resume! :-)

After we'd exited, the four of us climbed back into Martha and headed back to St. Bartholomew's. We had a very pleasant time with Bob and Diane who, we learned, are moving out our way in a few months.

St. Bartholomew's has never in my knowledge arranged a group outing before. This one was great, and I hope we'll be doing more such in the future.