Right there with you.

I was a dinosaur nut as a kid, as much of a PIA know-it-all as the little boy in Jurassic Park, and two of my favorite places in the world were the L.A. County County Museum of Natural History, which had several dinosaur skeletons, including a complete T-Rex, and the LaBrea Tar Pits, which were adjacent to the L.A. County Museum of Art.

There is a museum over the tar pits now, but when I was a kid they were still in the open air, and you could smell the tar. There was a very cool life-sized sculpture of a mastodon stuck in the tar, and just the listing of all the fossils they had recovered from the tar pits was extensive; from dire wolves to saber tooth cats, and on and on.

I dearly loved Jurassic Park when it came out, and how cool that Crichton found a way to make T-Rex into a hero of sorts. Of course, in addition to the film, he was also one of my favorite authors from way back.

But when it comes to dinosaurs, I'm basically a little kid that never grew up. I still dearly love them.