LEGO crane (c) the LEGO Group

The other day I spoke with a colleague about great toys that we used to have as kids. We both have kids, and we were talking about the toys our kids play with today, and how much how kids play has changed. My colleague and I are both engineers by training, and we've always been interested in technology, and as self-professed geeks we, of course, both played with LEGO as kids.

I remember playing for hours every day with my LEGO — building huge cranes, complex train sets, and all kinds of vehicles. Come to think of it, my younger brother still vividly remembers what happens when one hides important LEGO pieces from the older brother who is "working on the most important project in the world!" .. hm .. anyway, LEGO is clearly my all-time favorite toy, and I have tried very hard to share this with my own kids.

Sea Lion at the Mystic Aquarium

The Mystic Aquarium is a medium-sized aquarium with quite a few big indoor and outdoor exhibits including Beluga whales, sea lions, penguins, dolphins, coral reefs, and more.

This is another aquarium that I have been visiting often with my daughters. It's a bit of a drive for us, so when we go we make a short day-trip out of it, by also visiting the Mystic Village, and one or more other places on the way back from the aquarium.

Of course, over time a few exhibits have become "must-see" favorites — my daughters like the huge Beluga whales and "Coco" (one of the stars in the the Sea Lion show), while I always have to visit the coral reef exhibit.

The Shark Tank at the Maritime Aquarium

As aquariums go, the Maritime Aquarium is not very big, and it doesn't have any spectacular live shows with dolphins or killer whales. But it's very kid-friendly and it's just the right size and has enough exciting stuff to keep even the most unruly 5 year-old occupied for a while.

I have been coming here very often over the years with my daughters, and we actually have an annual membership (which pays for itself very quickly). Sometimes we come here and just run through it because it's a fun thing to do on a Sunday morning, and sometimes we spend lots more time. Sometimes we barely look at the exhibits, and sometimes we look at each one.

My youngest is now 5 years old, and is starting to be a little more interested in the various exhibits, while the older one is 13 and has been here a million times. We still find interesting things to do here and to look at. There is always a larger themed exhibit (the current one is called the "African Underwater Safari") which changes every few months, and then there are the regular exhibits. The focus of this aquarium is on the Long Island Sound, and the creatures that you'll find in this region.

This is the style guide for the KALADAN.ORG main theme. The purpose is to show off the styling for the most common HTML objects in the content area. The objects on the side bar are displayed in the Style Guide Block for this them.

Testing ScribeFire on this site. It seems to work great on my Many-Miles.com site, so naturally it was time to try it here as well. This post is for testing purposes only so that I can verify that everything actually works.