yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

The best thing about working for the museum's education department is that on some days you get to do things like go to the Brunel Archives and research through documents from the early 1800s, and other days you get to dress up like a pirate and play with kids on a giant bouncy castle.... that's what I got to do Saturday, and I'll get to do similar things all week!

Right now the museum is putting on a big pirates week for half-term because kids are out of school for a week and a half. The focus is on pirates from the area, as the south west of England was home to a number of legendary pirates... but mostly its just a lot of fun activities like pirate puppet making, the bouncy castle, etc. I spent some of my Thursday afternoon making up a Treasure Hunt board game which kids will be playing in the galleries all week, which was another fun thing I got to do. I felt like a kid, like when Lindsey and I used to make up our own board games and talk about selling them to Milton Bradley.

Friday was a nice day at the Museum because I got to go out with Liz to a conference to promote our education department and the activities and workshops we offer to early years (5 years and under) students. It was a fun day, and the conference was in Weston-super-mare so I got to go back there and play on the muzzies (amusements) on my lunch break as well.

I'm not really doing any marketing work in my job, but my boss has encouraged me to sit in and volunteer with as many parts of the museum as I would like to while I'm here - so I've made it a point to go on a few conference days to get a feel for how the education department is promoted to teachers and schools. It's really good news all around because I'll get to sit in with the archives and collections to see how they work, as well as getting some experience with our audio library of oral history interviews, and even get to learn how to use the Radio Room which broadcasts to a station called commonwealth fm one month a year - all great experiences to have.

I'm going to post some photos later tonight or tomorrow... they will include some photos from the Cube, some photos of me and Liz at the conference (including one of me holding a giant cockroach from the Zoo) and a few other random photos from around Bristol and things that I have been doing. So I hope you'll enjoy.

I had a nice relaxing day today after working a six day week and getting ready to work another one... I wanted to do a thorough edit of my fellowship manuscript but haven't gotten around to much of it yet... because I'm just in the mood to relax and do nothing. It's hard to find large blocks of time where I can really focus on it... so i'll give it another go this evening.Other than that things are going well... I'm starting to notice that the fall is getting here, which means cool wet morning, but thankfully warm and sunny afternoons just in time for my lunch break - and then cold evenings... but not too cold yet.

Every year I find that fall sneaks up on me... by saying that I mean, that every year it always feels like summer, until one day you have one of those moments where you look around and just realise its fall all of a sudden. As if all the leaves changed colour overnight, and suddenly a cool but comfortable breeze takes you by surprise telling you that summer is over... it's not necessarily a bad feeling, but its also a bit sad to realize that the long hot days of summer are behind you. I had one of those moments this week when I was walking home under St. James circle - there are lots of roundabouts in Bristol, but the major ones you sort of have to take stairs below the street level and then cross underneath. St. James is so large that there is an small open air park in the circle below, and as I was walking down the ramp I realized that I was foot deep in crunchy coloured leaves that were swishing and blowing around my ankles as I walked. All the leaves collected there after being blown down into the circle, and suddenly I looked around and felt that it was fall.

Look for my photos, hopefully I'll get them up tonight.

- Chris