the starting stages of my astronomy extra credit paper:

So, I woke up at 830am today (today being Thursday, the 13^th of December) and decide that today is the day I will go to the Hayden Planetarium and see the displays and take in the show that is called “Cosmic Collisions.” I sort of wish they would have added several exclamation points after the title, because when I think of a phrase like “Cosmic Collisions” I expect there to be a lot of Whiz! Bang! Pop! moments involved. There were, assuredly, but I just really wish the people responsible for the title would have taken excessive punctuation to drive home the point into account.

At about 10am, after my eleventeenth cup of coffee and some toast with pumpkin butter I noticed that it started to sleet. I decided that this was as good a time as any to jump into the shower and get dressed. I collect my laundry and then head into Manhattan.

I really hate going into Manhattan. If it wasn’t for school, I’d probably visit Manhattan as many times in a year as the toes on Ernest Hemingway’s famed cats. The reason I have a disdain for Manhattan is mainly because I grew up on Long Island, so any trip to “New York City” was relegated to this island the colonists bought off the natives for a few bucks. Not to say I didn’t enjoy the trips, but by the time I made the reverse move my parent’s respective families had made decades ago, moving to Brooklyn, I was sick of it.

As I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, it’s sleeting. I drop my laundry off and thank the sweet Russian woman who handles the machines for touching my dirty clothes and assure her I will pick them up later in the day, and realize I left my scarf at home. I slide down the sidewalk of my Brooklyn neighborhood back to my house and get my scarf and tell my cat, Ollie (Kitty Yum Yum), that I’ll be home later, and goddamnit, he better have dinner on the table when I get home.

Waiting for the F train to come, I think it would be funny and silly to listen to songs with references to stars and their ilk. I instead settle for a band called Galaxie 500, a Boston band from the late 1980s/early 1990s. They’re real mellow and good “headphone music,” especially on a day like this one.

After a brief layover with a lunch date, I head uptown to the American Museum of Natural History. I get off at the station, and remember how much I love this museum.

This museum was one of the first I remember ever going to. In retrospective, I think my love for it stems from my love of having to make dioramas in elementary school. They have so many full size dioramas! It’s amazing! The last time I remember the bulk of my family going (all of us, aside from my older sister) was 1990-ish. My father deemed it funny to take a photo of her mowing the lawn, as a sick punishment for not driving into the city in the station wagon for family fun.

Okay, okay. The “planetarium part”: I check my coat and bag (they were wet, sue me) and get on line. I’m figuring I’ll receive an incredible discount for being a student (and a poor one to boot!) and am told to pay $16.50. FUCK. Anyway, I do it, mainly because I know you, dear reader, want me to succeed and do well in this class. Still: $16.50. Is this considered a tax write-off? I know that when I go to museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art I pay no more than $1 for the basic entry (In your face, suggested donation!), but still. It’s not like there’s a box-office tally going on for a film they show every half-hour.