May 2-4

What is better than a long weekend? Seriously? What could be better than a whole day of time to program yourself, do the things you need to do (groceries, yard chores, Driver Ed) and spend some time on real relaxation. I spent my relaxation time watching a whole lot of Sex and the City, seeing people I like, and sleeping. Mmm.

I checked out the new Museum of Nature on Saturday, as promised, during the free day. Milan and I went, and we took it all in. I don’t think we missed a single exhibit. We did, however, skip the historical/ghost tours since the line went forever, as Trevor at Apartment 613 put in his liveblog.

Since most of my excitement was related to my childhood love of the place, the visit was bittersweet. I miss the dark, winding dinosaur exhibit, a model they’ve abandoned in favour of the generic museum “big room, in and out same door” model. Although, I concede there were many cool things (the blue whale skeleton is exactly as neat as you'd think it would be) and I did love the “lantern”, the glass tower on the front. The view there is beautiful. I could have stayed there all evening, watching the sun set.

*****

I also spent a great deal of the weekend going for 24 hours at time “offline”; not checking Facebook, Google reader, Twitter… As a journalism student, I use all sorts of different "social media". I've never thought about the stress keeping up with those things puts on me. It felt like a break to just tell myself the emails can wait. Is this unhealthy? And am I the only person who feels this way? I certainly have what I call the “know-know-know” drive, the need to keep up-to-date with as many things as possible at once – it’s one of the reasons I like journalism. Should I work on "unplugging" more?