Fossils For Kids

This week I went to an elementary school to show off my fossils to a couple of groups of kids. I used fossils from my own collections and some of my friends. It made me realize that sometimes the fossils you collect for coolness are not necessarily the best for educational resources. In other words if I was to collect fossils for educational reasons I would definitely want some plant fossils, amber, tracks or coprolites and a modern longbone.
I'm sadly lacking in plant material, not counting my petrified wood. Amber is an important way things fossilize. My most obvious modern bone, other then skulls, is a moose vertebra which quite a few of the kids asked if it was a tree (which I don't really understand but there you go). Tracks or coprolites are really good trace fossils (the type of fossil no one ever thinks about). They show evidence of the animal but is not part of the animal itself.
I also realized that some of the fossils I do have that don't actually look that cool are really good learning tools. For example the petrified wood is just a big chunk but it is a good example of how the wood becomes a stone. And I have a little piece of sandstone that has imprints of tiny shells and it was the best trace fossil I had.
It was a fun activity though and maybe some of the kids will remember that not all fossils are dinosaur bones!

Learning from Journals

I recently re-read my journal from about a year and a half ago to up to 6 months ago. It was really interesting. First, I think journals are weird because time seems to go by so fast. Each entry, each day is so short that I can get through months in a single sitting. Also even though it was not very long ago I had already forgotten so much, particularly the hard and sad times in my life had been glossed over in my head. My journal seemed like the whole time was a lot more difficult then I remember, but to be fair I think sometimes journals have a tendency to emphasize the bad because it is a safe place to vent. Another thing that was fun is remembering the things I didn't include about certain events. For instance I wrote about going to an event and I went away annoyed but didn't explain why... or at least fully why I was annoyed... But I remembered. However, the thing I enjoyed most reading back through was seeing God's hand in my life. Having the perspective of even a few extra months I was able to better understand the feelings and experiences I was going through in the moment. God answers prayers and the longings of our hearts.

Puzzles and Dinosaur Puzzles

So I've been working at a new project at work lately. In the collections they have what they think is 4 individuals, of an iquanodontid species from the same quarry. My job is to try to see if I can figure out which bones go together because they were not articulated (or in place) when they were found. I have worked on and off on it for about two weeks. One thing I noticed was that especially in the first couple of days I wasn't accomplishing much because I was organizing all the data in several different ways, sometimes unnecessarily. When my professor asked me about it I told him off the cuff that it was like doing a puzzle that doesn't actually fit together. He laughed and agreed.
Then I started thinking more about it and realized that when I do puzzles with my family (3D of course) I do the same thing I organize the pieces until they are so subdivided that there is pretty much only one choice.... it makes the puzzle really easy, it just takes a long time to actually get to the point where I'm actually putting pieces together.
Anyway, it's been an interesting process, and I'm a little sad I can't tell more about which pieces go where but I think I made some good process. And it was also interesting to realize how much my problem solving strategies were the same for both puzzles and separating out individual dinosaurs.

This is a picture I took of the organized foot elements. The left feet on the left and the right feet on the right (surprisingly) with the largest individual on the bottom and the smallest at the top.

Changing Importance

The other day I was looking for some messages on facebook and came across one someone sent to me 4 years ago and I had never seen it. (I have used facebook in the last 4 years but they weren't a friend so it never notified me... I feel like facebook could handle that better but that's another subject).
It was a woman who lives in my grandmother's house and she asked if I was the same Rebecca Esplin who hid messages in my grandmother's yard. Despite the message being 4 years old I responded with an excited yes, and we have chatted a bit about how her kids have had such fun finding a few of the messages. What is funny is that I don't think I have thought about those secret notes/treasure hunts we did as a family for a long time. As a kid I remember writing about them for school assignments and telling people about it when talking about our vacations. Hiding and finding those notes was one of the highlights of my childhood and yet now it isn't something that I even think about very often.
I guess it's just interesting how something so important at one point in your life just becomes a fond memory at other points in your life. The same is true for people. There are people from my childhood that were really important for awhile and now i have no interaction with them at all except for fond memories.

Age Assumptions

This weekend I met quite a few new people and it got me thinking about how often I make assumptions about age, mostly just relative to me. However some of my assumptions tend to be based on inaccurate things. If someone is married I almost always assume they are older than me even though I know that is ridiculous. A woman who looks really dressed up with makeup also makes me assume they are older.
Maybe it is not so much that I assume other people are older than me is that I seem to downplay how old I am.... I think my brain is convinced I'm still 18..... That is until I spend time with a bunch of 20 year olds....

Big Events, Small Moments

Big life changes often take a long time to sink in. I'm engaged to get married which is a pretty big change and it would make sense if the times when it felt the most real would be significant events like the proposal, or telling parents or things like that but it hasn't really been that way. The times when this change has been the most real has been small moments like when we are introduced as a couple, or when we refer to something as “ours.”
Every large event is made up of innumerable small moments maybe that is why they are the things that are significant.

Humor and Hurt

When I was about 8 or 9 (but maybe a little older) I had a friend over for the weekend. We had sleep overs every couple of months and had been friends since we were 3 or 4. We were really good friends (and still are) and were really comfortable with each other.
For whatever reason that weekend we took to calling each other names. For the most part, I think I had been calling her weird and she had been calling me freak. They weren't really meant as insults but we kept saying them. That night she was on the top bunk of my bunk-bed and after I brushed my teeth I walked into my room super frustrated with her (I don't remember why). I stood on the edge of the bottom bunk and looked at her and with gritted teeth called her weird, and freak, and some other things that we had said that day. And I meant everyone as a bitter insult. I've never been one to call people names in seriousness but I felt like I could because it was just the same words I had been using...
I think after that we went to bed in silence (which was an unusual experience), but since then I have been more cautious in how I speak, even in jest (maybe especially in jest) and I have always remembered that experience. It scared me how words used in a silly context could so easily become permissible to use in anger and I never wanted that to happen again.
I know I think about words and phrasing more than most people but I don't think it is just words/names. I think humor in general can be a dangerous line because humor is fun and delightful but walks the line of hurt and misunderstanding... and I don't know how to always stay on the correct side of the line.