exploring our evolution, martins to martinis.

judd and i spent the evening exploring the village. it was crowded with college kids, and looked a bit like austin on new years eve. but it was just a friday night... 

we found a beautiful little thai place called THE HOLY BASIL. i had two lovely cocktails: the first (pictured) a pear martini, and the second a lychee martini. don't make me choose which one i liked the best.

judd ordered a drink too. D-coke. we took a photo of it so he knew he was just as sophisticated and elegant as the rest of us. probably, actually, more so. 

we started with steamed vegetable spring rolls. we ate most of them before i remembered to take a photo.

i can't eat thai without ordering the closest thing on the menu to traditional gang dang. here is THE HOLY BASIL's version of vegetarian red curry (gang dang) and it was fresh, light, and lovely. it didn't burn our faces off, like our friends at chanon thai. 

our other entree was a striped whole bass, fried and served curled around itself with its tail in its mouth, with plum and ginger sauce. delightful.

i walked into the bathroom, and it smelled absolutely amazing. i thought to myself, this is what i want my wedding to smell like. the lilies (?) lining the walls were real. how enchanting.

after dinner we walked around the village for a couple of hours. we passed this bookstore. do you notice anything strange about this window? it's ok, it took me a minute too. i'll just go ahead and tell you: all the books in the display case are POETRY books. i know, weird.

we found this fantastic frozen yogurt place. you can pick the size of your cup, and then they had probably 10 flavors to choose from, and then about 20+ toppings. you do it all yourself, and then pay based on weight. mine is slightly to the left: banana with chocolate chips, mango with sprinkles and gummy bears, neatly divided. judd got coffee and chocolate with chocolate cookie crumbs and cookie dough, and piled it all together.

and on to the museum of natural history! we spent over 5 hours here, had to skip certain floors and exhibits, and still didn't really get to see everything we wanted to. i have a great photo of judd at the subway stop for it, but i just realized i forgot to put it in here... oops. 

anyway. here i am in front of a life size blue whale suspended from the ceiling. 

i don't know what it is about natural history museums trying to tell it like it is/was, but there are some really hilarious displays at museums like this involving lots of blood and gore and death and such. i really dig it. i would like to be a fly on the wall during design meetings for displays such as these:

i never got around to posting pictures from the dinosaur museum in utah's thanksgiving point, but i will, there's a lot of violence there.

have you ever seen the movie THE SQUID AND THE WHALE? well, you should. it actually kind of messed with me a lot when i saw it @ first-- it's a pretty intense/accurate divorce film, as i recall. but i honestly don't remember, i blocked a lot of it out. anyway, it's set here. yet another film location i was excited to point out. they got the title from this display:

hallie really loves bunnies right now, so i try to take pictures of them for her whenever i can:

i saw this display from a distance, and almost cried. i knew instantly what it was (i was an anthropology major, after all). this is a depiction of the footprints at laetoli, and possibly the most romantic story ever told. about 3.6 million years ago (yeah, i had to look up the date again, so what? i could have ball parked it though, really... i could have!) two hominid individuals walked side by side through volcanic ash near tanzania. most think it was a male and a female, because of the weight differentials, but some do think it could have been a mother and child. either way, the image makes the ultimate valentine for an anthro geek. 

here i am, with my great-great-great-great x 50 grandfather.

just kidding, that actually isn't really how it works.

... right?

(it isn't).

here's judd, caught in the middle of a stampede! oh noes!

so, we got so lost inside the actual museum trying to figure out how to get into the museum that we couldn't find where to pay, and we accidently went through the whole thing for free. but then we left the museum to figure out how to get into their special butterfly exhibit, and we ended up having to pay. it was really weird. 

isn't this see-through butterfly beautiful? and strange?

then we entered the live butterfly exhibit. this butterfly was as large as a bird:

and these butterflies were mating:

lots of people didn't follow this rule... but i did.

it was so warm and humid in there that i didn't want to go back out into the semi-drizzling new york city streets.