Rejected activity idea for "spiders" workshop (for 4 to 6 year olds) at Children's Discovery Museum:

Purpose of activity: to illustrate how spiders eat.
Materials: Juice boxes w/straws, markers/paint, construction paper, glue

Take juice boxes and, using markers/paint, decorate them to look like the insect of your choice. You can use construction paper to cut out legs which can then be glued to the sides of the juice box. When finished, jam a straw into your insect's head and suck out all of it's juice, just like a spider would (okay, spiders don't use straws, but they're more adept at this kind of thing).

Hey, I thought it was cool.

Later, I was playing drums with a couple of one year olds. The little blonde kid had the biggest grin on his face as he banged on the drums and rattled the rattles. I had a sudden flash that it was at this very table that I first met Jen and the boys - playing music with them. In retrospect, it turned out to be a wonderful, life-changing moment. It's kind of funny how those can happen and you don't even realize it at the time. I used to wonder, during the times I was single, if I had already met the next woman I would end up falling in love with. And here I am, from my vantage point in the present, realizing that I had already met her, and that it happened in a smallish room, upstairs at the museum. Fate.

cds I listened to while trying to think up activities that won't gross people out: Cowboy Junkies "Black Eyed Man", Bird Grabowiecki Czerwinec "Deepbreathing", Rasputina "My Fever Broke", In Memory of...Celtic Frost, Cirith Ungol "King of the Dead", Shock Headed Peters "Tendercide"

currently enjoying the repetitive strains of: Michael Nyman "After Extra Time"