Yes, I'm the sort of guy whose Friday night plans include going to see a Star Wars exhibit.

I went online last night and ordered a ticket for Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. I've been meaning to see it (and I've appreciated the photos that greyaenigma posted), and the exhibit closes Monday, so getting into it is now a moral imperative. I'll go after work.

I tried getting tickets Tuesday, in fact, driving over to the museum after getting home, but I'd've been in line for over an hour and a volunteer said doing it online was better. I heeded her advice and headed off to my other errands.

Speaking of volunteering, I've done a similar gig: in August 1992, between graduating from my Virginia high school and heading to Oregon to start college, I volunteered at the National Air & Space Museum's Star Trek: The Exhibition. That remains, no jive, one of the coolest gigs I've done in my life, spending days surrounded by this geeky mass of humanity and concentrated Star Trek goodness, where visitors would talk up their Trek memories, sign the Guest Book in Klingon and pretend to beam up next to Classic Series-era Kirk, Spock and McCoy (from the right angles those cardboard cutouts looked lifelike). We even had surviving Tribbles from the original show! (Speaking of "surviving," did you know the producers of the '60s show actually got angry letters saying that the Tribbles had been subjected to inhumane filming conditions?)

The capper to that month was the early-September event I helped out at, the Rover Expo, where under a tent on a grass lot next to Air & Space (where the National Museum of the American Indian was later built) several teams demonstrated concept rovers for exploring Mars. These ranged from a barely foot-long bug-like thing (I think it was called the "Genghis," and it was actually cute; kids loved it) to an 18-foot-tall many-legged monster. Oh yes, I was geeking out at all of those pieces of technology. We can't yet quite "star" trek, but we are doing the planet trek...