Sheet Metal and Mummies

I've been bopping around town more than usual - my energy level is creeping back up, though the temperature sure hasn't been.

Yesterday afternoon I ended up at the Sheet Metal Workers Union/training facility in SE Albuquerque near the airport. They've received federal stimulus money to train workers in this field - it seems that there is more demand for this kind of work given the turn to greener buildings. I sure hope some of the workers affected by the General Electric Aviation plant closure later this year will be able to take advantage of this program.

Today, Sleeping Beauty and her best friend and I made our way over to the NM Museum of Natural History. I never noticed until now, but both of my abodes are approximately the same distance from the local Natural History Museum - be it Albuquerque's Museum Row or the National Mall.

We checked out the Dynamax movie on Mummies, giving it a post-modern critique after it was finished. I commended the Rear Window Captioning (this theater and the Guild are my best bets for interesting captioned movies in Albuqeurque - we just don't have the population to support the number of captioned movies that DC has, and most of the time I'm not so crazy about the captioned movie choices in the Duke City - this week it is Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel and Up in the Air).

So back to the movie critique - we decided that the shoes and clothes on the women were a bit too 20th century, and that the dramatic sexy sultry walk of the queens was contrived. But the DNA stuff was cool, as was the idea that some dead guy who donated his body to science a few years ago was mummified in the Egyptian way in the course of scientific research.

Long ago I arranged for my body to be donated to science and I've always assumed this meant medical student training. I don't think they'll want to mummify me, but that would be awesome if they did.

After the movie we hung out with the dinosaurs and the Microsoft computer geeks. I like that juxtaposition.

Bill Gates and the Dinosaurs = bad rock band name?