This weekend was full of adventure! Our quest for a good game store and a bed frame brought us to the magical land of Hartford, Connecticut, and environs. Since we were headed there anyway, we decided to hook up with Michael, a person I’ve been friends with for over five years and yet have never met in “real life”. It was great to finally meet him, though we were in a town none of us knew much about, so we ate at IHOP and went to the mall. Soon we’ll actually meet at each others’ houses, once we’re all settled in (he just moved as well.)

Hartford is home to a game store called “The Dragon’s Lair” in a fit of originality. There should be a $500 fine for using the word “Dragon” in the name of a game store. Nevertheless, it was a nice store with a really good selection, especially of board games, so I can see myself going there pretty often.

On Sunday we decided to hit the Springfield quad museums. These are four small museums all in one area. We went to the natural history one and the science one, and briefly looked into the fine arts museum and area history museum. We also walked among the Dr. Seuss sculptures in the center of the quad (Dr. Seuss was from Springfield.)The museums were really neat for being so small. You can see some of the things we saw here:

The Quad Museums

One of the coolest things we saw at the science museum was a glass orb that simulated a gas giant planet. It had two layers, and in-between was some kind of liquid. You could turn the outer layer and watch the effect on the liquid “atmosphere”. Becky demonstrates it here:

Gas Giant Simulator (3mb AVI file)

I also made a few new compilation CDs, but I’ll report on those later today, since I don’t have the track order finalized yet.