August 16, 2008

Another awesome day!



Cheryl and I had an awesome day today! It didn't start off so well (or as early as we had hoped) because the bed I have out here is only a twin, which doesn't work out so well for the both of us. I think the bed is actually a little bit smaller than a twin because it's smaller than the box frame it's sitting on and the twin sheets Cheryl bought for the bed are a little baggy. Anyway, Cheryl ended up sleeping on the floor last night and last looked at the clock at 3:45, so she was tired in the morning. I was tired too, but don't have a valid excuse like she does. We finally got rolling at about 11 and pretty much had one goal for the day: go find Durham's "Neglected Dinosaur Statue." We found out about the statue on RoadsideAmerica, the same place we found out about the world's biggest shuttlecock. It's an awesome Web site. See what kind of cool stuff is near you — you might be surprised!

The statue used to be part of a dinosaur walk associated with Durham's Museum of Life and Science, but a hurricane destroyed most of the dinosaurs and this beast is the last one remaining. And they weren't lying about the neglected part. It has a big hole in the side and it looked like a homeless person set up camp under the neck. It was fun though!

After that, we drove around looking for a place to eat and ended up at Northgate Mall, near Duke's campus. We had lunch and then I went to a barbershop in the mall for a haircut. I have been meaning to get a haircut for quite a while, but have just been so busy with the roadtrip and getting settled and all. The barbershop was a good time. There were three people cutting hair: an old lady, a dude that weighed about 500 pounds and was talking on his cell phone the entire time (while he was cutting hair) and a cool looking dude with dreads down to his shoulders and a Michael Vick jersey. I was the only white boy in the place and ended up getting the cool guy and he was awesome. I told him I'm from Seattle and it turns out he's old buddies with Chris Wilcox. He gave me a good haircut, including some features I've never had done before.
1) He made my hairline go straight across (shaving off my widow's peak). It looks cool now, we'll see how it looks in a week...
2) He gave me pointed sideburns. Never would have requested them, but I think they look sharp.
He was really nice and gave me his card with his cell phone number on there and told me that if I ever have questions about the area, I can give him a call.





After that, Cheryl and I drove around Duke's campus and then headed back to the house and crashed for a little bit. When we woke up, we were both hungry, so I started researching places for dinner. When we first got to North Carolina's visitor center, I picked up a little magazine called the Official Visitor's Guide to Durham and it is awesome. It has a listing of every restaurant in the city, with a little paragraph on some of the best ones. Because it's Cheryl's last night here, I wanted to take her out for a nice dinner and found a place called Watts Grocery that looked good, but not too stuffy. I called for reservations, but couldn't make one, although they said they had eight tables for walk-in guests. We drove over there and walked right in. It was a cute little place and the food was fantastic. Cheryl had a steak and I had the pork tenderloin. We got a side order of hush puppies and I also got a sweet tea. I'm not joking when I say that I've ordered sweet tea at every place we've gone out to eat. Sweet tea is so good and makes every meal that much better. Here are some pictures of our delicious meals (for Caroline!).







After dinner, we went to a place called Locopops. (I found this in the visitor's guide too, as it was voted Durham's best frozen treat.) It's a little shop that only sells popsicles and it was amazing. Cheryl and I ate our first ones in the store (she had cookies n' cream and I had blueberry buttermilk) and they were so good that we got two more for the road (peaches n' cream and ginger cantaloupe). Here are some of the other flavors they feature: chocolate brownie, apple-lemon-thyme, cucumber chile, berry hazelnut, jasmine green tea, ginger cucumber, fluffernutter, cherry hibiscus, mango chile and mexican chocolate. I think Cheryl and I are going back tomorrow after lunch!



Now, we're just chillin' back at home for the night. Dickran's back in town, moving out some more of his stuff and he just gave me a mini fridge for my room, so that's awesome. In a little bit, Cheryl and I will play some games and watch the Olympics or maybe a movie and then head to bed. Hopefully it'll go better than last night!