Sunday, October 30, 2016

Pez Museum

There's not a whole lot of stuff to do in the immediate area where we live, since most of the exciting museums and cultural landmarks are up in San Francisco, but we do live close to a Museum of Pez Memorabilia. We tried to go with friends once before, only to discover it was closed so its proprietors could attend the PEZcific convention of California Pez collectors. We tried again yesterday, and happily they were open this time.

The museum itself is a very unimposing storefront in downtown Burlingame - if we weren't watching the street numbers we would have gone right by it. Inside is a giant room full of every Pez dispenser ever made (over a thousand!), and a very enthusiastic curator who gives a really great guided tour. We learned a lot about Pez, including that it's actually an Austrian company, and "pez" is short for "pfefferminz" - German for "peppermint" - because that was the candy's original flavor. Also, the original dispensers didn't have heads, and just looked like cigarette lighters:
There are a lot of different heads:
They also used to make gun dispensers, but those have understandably been retired:
The gift shop had many current varieties of dispenser, including Harry Potter:
And US presidents:
In addition to Pez memorabilia, the museum also had a variety of other classic toys, like Potato Heads:
And ray guns:
They also had a variety of toys that are now banned - some for obvious reasons (i.e. they contained radioactive material):
And some for less obvious reasons (matador Barbie encouraged violence against animals, sky dancers could be used as projectile weapons - we actually had that toy and used it that way all the time, and the Mickey comic contains "adult behavior"):
We had a great time at the museum, and even got a picture with the world's largest Pez dispenser (although unfortunately it does not contain correspondingly giant Pez candies):

Thursday, October 20, 2016

New Hampshire wedding

We went to our friends' wedding last weekend! They are both programmers, so this was the sampler I made them:
The wedding was in New Hampshire, and it was excellent to get a brief taste of New England fall, given that it's my favorite season and there is nothing that remotely resembles it out here in the Bay. All the leaves were gold and red, and the wedding was in the White Mountains so you had beautiful views every way you looked.
The wedding weekend involved hiking, arts and crafts, making s'mores around a campfire, and sleeping in bunk beds in a giant cabin-y lodge. It was just like Girl Scout camp, and it was awesome.