I got to touch a miohippus yesterday.

And rare minerals including one that was just discovered called creedite, and some other fossils, and the skull of an ichthyosaur (?), and some other cool awesome stuff.

Every week it's like I get to live out the wildest dreams of a five-year-old boy. Which is weird. But it's hard not to slip into that mood, really, and instantly be reduced to saying "wow!" to yourself gape-mouthed because damn, we get to do some awesome shit in grad school. Who wouldn't kill to have some guy in a museum say "if you wanna see something just go ahead and slide out the drawer and hold it, just don't break it" when you're surrounded by entire epochs and billions of years of history?