Monday would mark the first day that we opened the Tsunami wave tank to the public. When I arrived for work on Tuesday it was decided that we would keep the wave tank open to the public on that day as well. The Tsunami tank seemed to draw peoples attention the second that we opened it to the public. The only thing that kids apparently love more that Legos is knocking them over with a powerful wave device. The max parameter that we had calculated for our “Tsunamis” had to be rethought when it was discovered that a patron will use these settings about 99.9% of the time. Once we ran out of Wet Floor signs, it was decided that perhaps we should limit how strong people are allowed to make waves. After being open to the public for only a few hours, we were forced to shut down one of the two sides of the wave tank when a piece of foam backing came undone. Rather than closing the entire exhibit so that we could disassemble the tank, we  decided to simple cut the power on that one side. We also discovered a phenomenon that occurs when you let people build with Legos at the same time as they are allowed to play with the controls; people tend to think it is funny to splash family  members that are obliviously working on their Lego structures. This joke did not seem to get old any time soon either.  We were finally forced to close up the exhibit when half of our Legos had fallen beneath the tank. The “public test” of the tsunami tank proved to be better than I expected and will defiantly be a hot activity when we are finally read to open it permanently.

On a more negative note, we discovered (after 4 weeks) that Lego is apparently back ordered on all of the pieces that we had ordered. As  a result, none of the pieces will arrive before the end of August. Fortunately, I was able to find some of the pieces that we needed from my own private Lego connection.  This week also marks the end of an era in Newport, the Japanese dock that had washed ashore has now been completely broken up and is on its way to a salvage yard. Aurora, our octopus was far more active this week than she has been for a while. We were able to touch her late in the day on Saturday. We also nearly got soaked with a jet of water from the mischievous cephalopod.