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After staying up past midnight lounging in the hot tub sipping mead, 7am came pretty early on Sunday. I had originally asked for that day off because a bunch of us were thinking of going crystal-mining in Arkansas, but it didn't work out so I had a free day off. So since I still wanted to go see the pearls, we dragged ourselves out of bed and got on the road. Brenda didn't feel up to a jaunt starting that early, so it was only hub and I.
We chatted about life and love and such on the way down, and arrived a few minutes after the museum opened at 11. There were hardly any people there, which was nice. We bought the Under the Sea package, which included the pearl exhibit and a ticket to the IMAX movie about the ocean at 2pm. We grabbed some lunch and went to see the pearls. I've always liked pearls, and saw many beautiful individual pearls and stunning pearl jewelry, both ancient and modern. I also learned lots of stuff beyond the 'pearls are formed in oysters when they get stuff in'em' which was pretty much the extent of my knowledge. But mainly I got to look at a lot of pretty stuff, and that’s always a happy thing. Tiffany’s seemed to feature heavily. After we’d seen it, we wandered into the souvenir shop. I would have liked to have picked something up, but the stuff was way overpriced, and nothing really screamed ‘buy me!’ anyway so we headed to the IMAX.
This one was narrated by Meryl Streep, with music by Sting. I kept waiting for the ‘humans fuck up everything they touch’ section on pollution that every nature show seems to feel obligated to include, but this one just glossed over it with one sentence. I was glad to hear it; I know how humans are already- show me some pretty fish now! There was a really interesting segment about a saltwater lake in some islands in the Pacific. They have these non-stingy vegetarian jellyfish that keep a colony of algae inside of them that they feed off of- they drift around in the sunlight all day, then at night sink down through a layer of red algae to a layer of nitrogen-rich water that will apparently kill a human that swims in it for more than 5 minutes or so, but that feeds the algae.
Something I discovered- have you seen pictures of phoenixes in oriental restaurants? They look similar to peacocks, but instead of having big fan tails they’ll have just a few feathers, often 3, sometimes 5 (and since they are a symbol of royalty, I’m sure the number of feathers is significant) that look similar to peacock tail feathers with an eye at the end. But instead of being straight and wispy down the length of the feather, they curve and twist and look different somehow. I figured out how. They look just like jellyfish tentacles. I’ll see if I can find pictures online to show what I mean.
After the movie we headed back into the museum to check out the rest of the regular exhibits. They had a very small collection of Egyptian stuff, but I was eager to see the Hall of Minerals that I’d heard about. We started out looking at every specimen, but there were so many we just looked at the pretty shiny ones or the especially large or weird looking. I saw a blue topaz about the size of my head. Hub seemed especially impressed with the old mineralogy tools- measuring devices, scales and such that were made by hand and came in latched wooden boxes. We then poked around the Hall of the Americas, with exhibits devoted to Amazon natives, various plains Indians, Mayans and Incans, and whatever the Eskimos are called these days. There were weapons, totem poles, jewelry, clothing, even a tipi and a boat. There was the obligatory ‘white people fuck shit up’ stuff, but again they went light on it. That took a good couple of hours, and by then the museum was getting ready to close. I talked hub into a planetarium show, the ‘what’s in the sky tonight’ one.
It seems they make one of these every couple of months maybe; they pointed out constellations and Mars, but they went on about the Harvest Moon which was 2 weeks ago. It was silly, but even so, I still enjoyed it. I wish Austin had a planetarium! I also found out that there will be a lunar eclipse on Samhain. That’ll be impressive!
We headed home, driving into the Sun until it set. We were both tired and didn’t yak as much on the way home, but got back in time for Adult Swim and more snuggling. Hub seemed very affectionate today, touching and smooching on me all day and this is something I treasure more than anything else. It was a quiet trip, and I had a really fine time.
We chatted about life and love and such on the way down, and arrived a few minutes after the museum opened at 11. There were hardly any people there, which was nice. We bought the Under the Sea package, which included the pearl exhibit and a ticket to the IMAX movie about the ocean at 2pm. We grabbed some lunch and went to see the pearls. I've always liked pearls, and saw many beautiful individual pearls and stunning pearl jewelry, both ancient and modern. I also learned lots of stuff beyond the 'pearls are formed in oysters when they get stuff in'em' which was pretty much the extent of my knowledge. But mainly I got to look at a lot of pretty stuff, and that’s always a happy thing. Tiffany’s seemed to feature heavily. After we’d seen it, we wandered into the souvenir shop. I would have liked to have picked something up, but the stuff was way overpriced, and nothing really screamed ‘buy me!’ anyway so we headed to the IMAX.
This one was narrated by Meryl Streep, with music by Sting. I kept waiting for the ‘humans fuck up everything they touch’ section on pollution that every nature show seems to feel obligated to include, but this one just glossed over it with one sentence. I was glad to hear it; I know how humans are already- show me some pretty fish now! There was a really interesting segment about a saltwater lake in some islands in the Pacific. They have these non-stingy vegetarian jellyfish that keep a colony of algae inside of them that they feed off of- they drift around in the sunlight all day, then at night sink down through a layer of red algae to a layer of nitrogen-rich water that will apparently kill a human that swims in it for more than 5 minutes or so, but that feeds the algae.
Something I discovered- have you seen pictures of phoenixes in oriental restaurants? They look similar to peacocks, but instead of having big fan tails they’ll have just a few feathers, often 3, sometimes 5 (and since they are a symbol of royalty, I’m sure the number of feathers is significant) that look similar to peacock tail feathers with an eye at the end. But instead of being straight and wispy down the length of the feather, they curve and twist and look different somehow. I figured out how. They look just like jellyfish tentacles. I’ll see if I can find pictures online to show what I mean.
After the movie we headed back into the museum to check out the rest of the regular exhibits. They had a very small collection of Egyptian stuff, but I was eager to see the Hall of Minerals that I’d heard about. We started out looking at every specimen, but there were so many we just looked at the pretty shiny ones or the especially large or weird looking. I saw a blue topaz about the size of my head. Hub seemed especially impressed with the old mineralogy tools- measuring devices, scales and such that were made by hand and came in latched wooden boxes. We then poked around the Hall of the Americas, with exhibits devoted to Amazon natives, various plains Indians, Mayans and Incans, and whatever the Eskimos are called these days. There were weapons, totem poles, jewelry, clothing, even a tipi and a boat. There was the obligatory ‘white people fuck shit up’ stuff, but again they went light on it. That took a good couple of hours, and by then the museum was getting ready to close. I talked hub into a planetarium show, the ‘what’s in the sky tonight’ one.
It seems they make one of these every couple of months maybe; they pointed out constellations and Mars, but they went on about the Harvest Moon which was 2 weeks ago. It was silly, but even so, I still enjoyed it. I wish Austin had a planetarium! I also found out that there will be a lunar eclipse on Samhain. That’ll be impressive!
We headed home, driving into the Sun until it set. We were both tired and didn’t yak as much on the way home, but got back in time for Adult Swim and more snuggling. Hub seemed very affectionate today, touching and smooching on me all day and this is something I treasure more than anything else. It was a quiet trip, and I had a really fine time.
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Date: Oct. 21st, 2003 03:27 pm (UTC)From: