Anyhoo ... today started out Way Too Early, because Daughter #1 had to get to this testing center by 8am. This is the same test as she took this time last year ... it's a program that Northwestern University is doing to track "gifted" kids, and #1 was invited to take the test because of her extraordinarily high "Iowa" tests. We got her a "practice" test this year (to work on her "test taking skills" ... this is one of those things where it's better to put down some answer than none at all, so we were working on clock management, etc.) and I just scored that last night. These tests compare to a baseline for 8th graders ... #1 took this as a 3rd grader last year, and a 4th grader this year ... in one of the four sections on the one we did last week she was in the 95th percentile when compared to NINTH graders, or (as I explained it to her), if she was in a room with 100 random 9th grade kids, she had scored better than all but five of them (at five years their junior)! Of course, to keep her from getting a big head about this, I reminded her that William Thompson, Lord Kelvin, had already entered college at her age!
Needless to say, we're hoping she does very well on these. The whole concept of college scholarships is quite enticing given our current economic straits!
So, The Wife had told #1 that we'd spend the afternoon doing whatever she wanted, so when I picked her up she indicated she wanted lunch at Chili's and to go down to the Field Museum to see the Pompeii exhibit. Needless to say, I was pleased that (after a gruelling 3+ hours invovled with test-taking) she wanted to do something educational. One of the great things about living downtown in Chicago is that it is so awesomely easy to go do the major museums ... just hop on the Red Line, get off at Roosevelt, and get either the bus or the trolley over to the Museum Campus. We generally keep up Family memberships at the Field Museum, the Aquarium, and the Planetarium so we can "pop down there" without much thought. We did have to renew today at the Field, but it really didn't cost more that having us go out to the movies a couple fo times, and we probably hit each place 4 times a year, so it's not a bad investment. Frankly, had we gotten tickets to all three current "shows" at the Field (which are included in the membership plan) we'd have ended up paying only like five bucks more than what it would have cost for their "retail" package.
The Pompeii show was OK ... I'd seen stuff on Discovery/TLC on it which pretty much covered everything in the exhibit, but it was well done. The coolest thing we saw today, though, was an exhibit of "stuff" they found when putting in the new East entrance ... that whole area is land-fill, so when they were digging down they found all sorts of interesting stuff from the 1800's, which now is in some display cases on the lower level! I'm aching tonight, though, from the walking (about four plus miles between home, test center, and restaurant, plus who knows how much at the museum), which is a lot more than I'm used to.
See ... I knew nobody cared how my day went.