We took Tom Flynn’s advice and completely gave christmas a miss this year. It was great! Thanks, Tom!
Our annual big day was Darwin Day, February 12. For our Darwin Day equivalent of the christmas feast, we had spaghetti and meatballs in a tip of the hat to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
The big gift for my five year old boy was a stereo microscope. 10X and 30X, with a set of 15X eyepieces as well. I didn’t buy a cheap toy scope, but a proper dissection microscope. It will serve us for years, I’m sure. I also got him a box of insects cast in resin. The cast quality isn’t that great, but they are adequate.
Something I noticed about all the bugs is the two hooks they all have on the ends of their feet. Wasp, cricket, locust, spider, housefly, flower bug, scorpion, and ant. All have those nice two hooks on the end of each foot. Seems like the common bug ancestor must have worked out that two hooks pretty much get it on our planet and the design seems to have stuck. Obviously, my tiny collection isn’t enough to draw too many conclusions, but that sure seems like a positive correlation to me.
Today, my boy proudly told us he wants to poo on a plate so he can put some under the microscope to look at it. I guess I better get some slide making materials.
I wonder if anyone else celebrates Darwin Day as their big annual christmas replacement therapy day.
2 comments ↓
Good idea…We did christmas like usual; participated in all the commercialism and laid out our money to the corporate companies.; all in the name of God’s sons birthday of course….NOT!
Much credit to Tom Flynn’s book, The Trouble With Christmas. I’m not going to go so far as to show up for work during the week or so we get off duty around that time, though. It would be a ghost town and I wouldn’t get anything done anyway.
Next Darwin day we’ll get a proper microscope (not a stereoscope), I think.
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