36 hours in Oklahoma City

Highlights from my trip so far:

Movie at Warren Theaters- grandma and I watched Lincoln at these really nice theaters. Its an obvious effort to create a luxury experience in an attempt to bring people back to the theaters. Plush seats with more room, fewer seats, full bar, directors box seats with food service during the movie, marble throughout. The anteroom to the restrooms had a gas fireplace with ceramic logs and speakers playing a crackling log soundtrack.

Museum of Osteology- this is a fascinating and surreal museum of skeletons, joined, appropriately enough, with Skulls International, a company which sells skeletons and skulls of various creatures, and will also strip hunting trophies. Its a small museum, one large hanger-like room with a wrap-around balconies. The walls are covered with displays packed with specimens: modern animals, comparative anatomy, primates, humans at various stages of life and pathologies, dinosaur fossils, whales. There was, admirably, a current running through the museum in support of evolution, and an entire display of skulls, mostly replicas, of the lineage of homo sapiens. They did feel compelled, however to include a notice about not wanting to offend anyone's religion, but to feel free to dismiss science and logic. Actually, there's a bit of subtle humor in many of the cases: a mouse skeleton in the feline exhibit labeled "lunch!", the raccoon skeleton tearing apart a box of milk duds. Gift shop was a lot of fun.

Drinks at Vast- Vast is the restaurant and lounge on the top floor of Devon tower, a massive skyscraper which towers over the downtown. Swanky place. Expensive menu. Phenomenal views of the surrounding area. Better drinks and desserts than the lunch buffet, according to Tay. I got a Moscow Mule, grandma got a Manhattan, which she very much enjoyed. We got there around 5, which is when it opens and the best time to go for drinks. We watched the late afternoon turn into night, the sun setting in the distant west, the lights coming on.

Olympic boathouse complex- From the Devon tower, you can see across the freeway into the river, where some very interesting architecture is popping up. For reasons which escape me, Oklahoma City is the site of the US Olympic and junior Olympic rowing teams training, the alternate to Seattle. It's also home to many of the Ivy League schools rowing in the off season.