Memorial Day Vacation in Raleigh - Durham: Day 3

Day 3

We had a slow morning on my third day in Raleigh. After enjoying a veggie omelet breakfast at the apartment, we settled in to watch the documentary, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, which illuminates the fascinating story of Elizabeth Holmes, an entrepreneur who committed major fraud with her company Theranos. What an incredible story! She quit Stanford at the age of 19 to start this company that would supposedly create a method and machine to test more than 200 diseases using just a few drops of blood rather than full vials. As she gained investors (and large investments) in the company, and built a powerful board, it was like she could do no wrong. But as time went on, the machine never did what it was supposed to do; incorrect results came of the blood tests; employees were sworn to secrecy. This story came out, and trials are going on now to figure out how things will shake out. As ambitious and inspiring as Holmes is, I hope she goes to jail for a long time. (You can also listen to the ABC Radio podcast called "The Dropout" to learn more about her story.)

I continued my relaxing morning by sunbathing for an hour by the pool. Once I became restless, I cleaned myself up and headed to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Miriam only joined me for about an hour, but I was there until it closed; I even skipped lunch! This museum has so much going on, and covers so many different topics. I didn't even get to everything!

Whenever I go to natural science museums, I always figure I'll know a lot (or at least learned it in school at some point), but I also know there's so much to learn. Such as:

• Perching birds are part of the family called "passerines."
• Baby spiders are called "spiderlings."

The two-toed amphiuma has the largest red blood cells of any animal. Image found here.

There are fish with names like "Slippery Dick" and "Gag." Who thought up these names?

Along the subject of names, Chunky Gal Mountain is a real place.

North Carolina produces more emeralds than any other place in North America. Image found here.

Along with emeralds, North Carolina sports the oldest river, the most fungi, the most salamanders, and reaches the top of other lists.

Opossums have 50 teeth, more than any other mammal in North America.

I did not know the names for all the different part of a tree's trunk or their purposes.

North Carolina has more carnivorous plant families than anywhere else in the world. Image found here.

I thought this rock display was really cool! Look at all the different kinds you can find in North Carolina!

I didn't know the white "barnacles" on whales were called callosities, or that whales could have lice!

Who knew that manatees had teeth like conveyor belts or where their name came from?

These fossil paintings were commissioned by the artist Barbara Page. I thought they were so pretty! Notice the Lego one on the top right: those are the fossils of our time.

Rauisuchids came before dinosaurs as a type of Triassic archosaur. What? So many new words!

More information on archosaurs

I didn't know what an edentate was, and wasn't aware that it was even a word.

You might think this is a T-Rex, but you'd be wrong! (See below)

Birth control comes from plants? Who knew?

I was super-excited to see this, because I think human overpopulation is such a taboo subject. But it IS real, so I was ecstatic that this exhibit was sharing the importance of family planning (and so timely, too)!

There are more than 9,500 species of ants, and there are probably many more that we haven't discovered. Screen shot taken from here.

This image of a female marsupial frog disturbed me. What's going on with her legs? But this video helps explain!

I had no idea there were different kinds of snake tails!

The things in the jars show that male snakes' testicles (?) can have different shapes. Weird!

I didn't know there was a wasp that defended itself like a pill bug (or armadillo was my first thought). 

I also really liked the museum's "Beyond Curie" exhibit, which highlighted women in science. Here are two I didn't know about who had interesting stories as far as relating to men:

After closing down the museum, I headed back to the apartment and we went to Whole Foods to get some groceries for dinner. Miriam made this delicious shrimp and scallop dish, which we enjoyed with polenta (and bubbly rosé, obvi). We watched some silly videos, but then figured we should get out of the house for a little while.

Image found here

Our first stop was Imurj, where we listened to some local bluegrass music and looked at some beautiful art that focused on dementia. Then we tasted some Carolina whiskeys at (where else) Whiskey Kitchen, where the bartender made a yummy Old Fashioned out of our flight when we were over it. And to end the night we popped into Ruby Deluxe for their open mic night. We heard an angsty young man with a forlorn voice sing a few songs, and then a few women shared their spoken word poetry, which was really amazing.

It was quite the day!