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Yesterday, Reed and I had a fabulous adventure related to the NC Science Blogging Conference. As part of the pre-conference activities, a limited number of tours were available for conference members at local labs in the Triangle. The Duke Lemur Center was one of those labs, and you better believe we were on that list!!

Lemurs are prosimians, like lorises and bush babies, and I really enjoy learning about them. Prosimians are primates, like monkeys and apes, but they are a more ancient lineage. Learning about prosimians can tell us more about our ancient ancestors and what they might have been like. And they are cute! Unfortunately, many of these animals face extinction and are endangered or threatened. The usual culprits are to blame–habitat destruction and degradation by humans. The Duke Lemur Center not only conducts research to learn more about these animals, it also works to conserve their habitat.

Our tour started with a quick chat with Prof. Anne Yoder about some of the research projects that are being done and the facilities, and we met some of the staff who work at the center. Before we went on the traditional tour, we got to go behind-the-scenes and see a couple very special critters.

We went downstairs and waited our turn to step into the dark room, only to see two pairs of faintly reflecting eyes peering down at us from above. Aye-ayes! Aye-ayes are nocturnal creatures, and they’re not exactly lemurs–they’re kind of their own little selves. They have an extra-long finger on each of their hands, which they use to tap trees like a woodpecker. When they hear their food inside the tree, they will gnaw a hole in the tree and then fish the insect out with their long finger. They are very, very creepy looking. The two we saw were a mother-daughter pair, and they were not quite happy about us intruding on them (there was also a loris in that room, but it did not deign to come out and see us). The room has scaffolding of a sort inside of it, which they ran (very quickly) around upon, leaping sometimes here and there. One leapt to the vertical bar directly beside me, no more than a few inches away. (Imagine thrilled, but slightly alarmed, squeals from me at this point. In my head, of course! I didn’t want the aye-aye to gouge my eyes out. Teehee!)

I could have gone home after this and been perfectly happy. Hello? Aye-ayes! What more could you ask for?

However, my day was going to become even more perfect because the heart of the tour was yet to come. I did get to take some pictures of these lemurs, but most of them didn’t turn out very well because 1) lemurs are fast and bouncy and 2) it is hard to take pictures through the wire of the cages. Even these decent ones are a little fuzzy, but that’s ok with me.

Our tour viewed many different types of lemurs, and they can be very close to you. Sometimes they are just on the other side of the wire, looking at you, sticking their little fingers and toes and hands through. Other times, they are bouncing around and climbing up, up, and away in their pens. These animals are in a sheltered, heated area during the winter, and they have a warm, enclosed box inside their pens if they feel chilly. In the summers, many of them are out in the woods! There are six (or so) enclosed wooded areas at the Center where the lemurs live and play during good weather. Reed and I promised ourselves that we will come back for a tour during the summer, because frankly I don’t know if I can live a full life if I never see a lemur in a pine tree.

Anywho, on to the pictures.

One of the first animals we saw during our trip were Coquerel’s Sifakas, and we even got to meet one very famous one!

Here, you can see two of them up in the top left-hand corner. We also got to see them a little bit closer. Apparently, it was almost time for their evening snack. They get a big breakfast, and then it takes them most of the day to digest it–but we were there in the afternoon and they were ready for more!

If these look familiar, it may be because you’ve seen one of these before. (I know some of you leaping lemur fans have!) The next picture is of Jovian, but he is better known as the Kratt brothers’ friend, Zoboomafoo.

Hi, Zoboo! Thank you for introducing “leaping lemurs!” into my vocabulary. (And if you go to the show’s website that is linked above, you can sing along, karaoke-style, with the show’s songs. Just saying!)

Besides Zoboo and his kinfolks, there are two other lemurs that I can show you from our tour. One is this Golden-crowned Sifaka.

He has a sad story. Until 1988, it was thought to be “just” a subspecies of the also-rare Diademed Sifaka. After genetic testing, scientists discovered that the Golden-crowned was a separate species. Unfortunately, that means that this species faced a significant delay in conservation planning, and it has been declared critically endangered since 1996. Gold has been discovered in its habitat, and it is unlikely that this species will survive much longer in the wild. There are only a handful in captivity.

The other lemur is a Red ruffed lemur. These are similar to a blue-eyed black lemur, which we also saw on our tour, and these two species can mate and produce hybrids (called calico lemurs!). When our group rounded the bend, this lemur and its mate let off a full minute (and then some) of alarm calls! They calmed down by the time we reached them, and this one stayed still for the most part and let me take its picture. Later, it crawled over to us, and I have a good picture of its foot, too! I’ll spare you the close-up of the lemur’s foot, but I like it.

Besides these lemurs, we also saw ring-tailed lemurs, the evil dwarf bamboo lemurs, and a diademed sifaka. Those are the ones that stand out the most, but there were several other species that I’m not remembering much about, probably because I was trying to get a good picture and not listening very well! Oops! There are many more species of lemurs and it is very sad to think that there are fewer of them on the planet each year.

If you are ever in the Triangle area, I suggest you call and set up a trip to the center and take the tour. They also have a marvelous gift shop, and I now have new lemur socks, new lemur postcards, and a new lemur water bottle. I went a little overboard, but I could have bought one of almost everything! Reed made me go back to work after the tour to earn back all I spent. Meanie.

P.S. We did get snow today, but not as much as predicted! More in Morrisville where the conference was and very little in Raleigh at home. Fun!! I will write more about the conference tomorrow (fingers crossed), but I’ll say that it was very interesting and I have lots of links that I think will interest you! And some new ideas for my blog!

I am also editing my 12 books list for this year. I am heaving Doctor Zhivago out (see ya, sucker) and adding People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. The thing about listening to NPR for nine hours a day is that you realize when someone is on a book tour–this book has been featured on two national shows and in the local independent weekly and the author was in the Triangle last week (if I had known ahead of time, I would have gone to see her and get the book). Also, at first, I thought this author was Gwendolyn Brooks and I was very confused when I heard her on the radio and she was Australian. (I could have been confused because Gwendolyn Brooks died in 2000, but no, I was confused because she was Australian.)***

Also, one of my favorite shows on NPR is a local production–The Story with Dick Gordon. You should go visit and listen to Forklift Follies, which played yesterday and made me cover my mouth and laugh and laugh. I’m sure it made me look like a crazy podperson. Usually I eat lunch during part of this show, so I only get to hear bits and pieces–today I heard the EcoTinkerer, and that was pretty interesting.

***Speaking of poets, one of my goals this year is to memorize more poetry. Emily Dickinson came up in conversation over the holidays, and not one of us could recite one of her poems. I know some lines hereabouts–hope is the thing with feathers, something about I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me, and a snake in the grass. A few years ago, I did this for a while and I barely can remember which ones I learned! Law school drove that quite out of my head.

I’m still a podperson, and that is still working out ok. I’ve read over 10,000 documents since I started–and most of them are dull as dirt. Next time, I would like to have a completely unethical client whose personnel have no idea what professionalism means. Those might be some entertaining documents!

My new word that should die is “choiceful”–as in, we will be choiceful about the projects we work on in the future. I believe it means discerning. Most of the time management/corporate speak sounds like it was created by a con artist with a shallow vocabulary. I’m not so sure that this is far from the truth.

Anywho. Just wanted to check in on my little blog here and say hi. It might snow tonight! My first snow in North Carolina. The Triad is supposed to get an inch, but here it probably won’t be very much. Mostly freezing rain. Ur, yay? I have to figure out how I’m going to bundle up if I go to work tomorrow.

In the past few weeks, I’ve been making biscuits about once a week. They are pretty easy and I just have to check for the amounts of some of the ingredients now. Perhaps not the healthiest part of our diet, but they are a great treat.

Anywho, usually I make them with butter for the fat instead of shortening. I like it best because I feel like it is “real-er” than shortening, and it is tastier. Of course, it’s an extra wallop of animal product with all the negatives that go along with that. Tonight, though, I was close to the end of the butter so I used shortening. No biggie.

ARG. The dough was incredibly wet in comparison to the dough made with butter. (Although I just realized I have two variables–I also used self-rising flour this time around, too. We only had a little more than a cup of ap flour.) Sticky dough is my absolute hate in anything bread making. I roll my biscuits by hand–picking a chunk up and rolling it in my floured hands to make smoother balls of dough–so it gets all over everything! So horrible. I always just want to throw the whole thing out and do something else when I have sticky dough hands, but I take a deep breath and add more flour. I was worried that the biscuits would be tough because of all the flour I had to use, but they were fine. Not as tasty as butter biscuits, but after putting a pat of butter on one of the hot ones it turned out ok.

Yum! We also had baked chicken breasts (Reed had veggies, but I didn’t like them) so some of dinner was healthy.

Anywho, I wanted to write this down somewhere so I would have a record of what the differences in recipes turned out to be. And inspire more biscuit making.

Not repoire. Not reapor. RAPPORT.

Just for the record.

Besides corporate-speak, I have been tormented by spelling and grammar gnomes. EVIL gnomes. This doesn’t bother me most of the time, and I harbor a few of these evil gnomes to help me write at times, too. But they attack me constantly at work! Heehee.

Anywho. I get to work tomorrow, too! Yay!

In my previous post, I mentioned that I’m working now. Joy! It’s really, really great to be doing something that contributes to our little family (although Reed has said that he appreciates all that I’ve been doing while I’ve been at home), even if it is temporary. I’m a podperson! (We work in pods which are giant cubicles for about a dozen people.)

Technically, I am a document reviewer for a consulting firm, not a podperson. It’s exactly what it sounds like–I review documents for their relevancy to whatever legal issue is up for the clients (or really the client’s client). Yes, it is dull as dirt. However, I’m so happy to be doing it! This morning I would have even said euphoric, but that would probably be the two shots of espresso in my mocha talking. Teehee! This week, I think I’m going to break into overtime even though I just started on Wednesday. Woohoo! (I worked today and I’m working tomorrow.)

Anywho. The (end) client’s industry is at least decently interesting and not freakishly esoteric and technical, which is great. It could be so much worse! I think the worse part is having to read through American corporate-speak. I am making a list of words that I hate and wish would die–like learningful. No one has a learningful experience unless they work in corporate America. It is painful to read through organizational documents that are planning or putting through tortured management theories and using the stilted ridiculous language of management. Of course, I know what the point of a lot of those management systems is–after all, a degree in public management isn’t that far removed from business management. But it usually causes a mess in real life (whether that is because leadership is a rare skill, people are impatient, people like sounding important, or eventually these strategies work out) and just serves to keep middle and upper management busy!

Oh, well. The worst part is that I would prefer to move around more during the day, but I’m getting paid! Woohoo!

Also, 007 asked if I had a favorite book from 2007. I liked Possession by AS Byatt very, very much. It was a great story, which is what I am really looking for in fiction, and a little bit of a mystery involved. My second place favorite would probably be The Road by Cormac McCarthy. This book unsettled me. It is sad and creepy and…hopeful, nonetheless. I want to read it again and let it sink in, since I now know what happens. Those are my two faves.

A year ago, I made a list of books to read during 2007–a book for each month. I certainly didn’t read a book a month, but I actually ended up reading six of the books from that post and I’ve started on the 7^th. Currently, I’m reading The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan when I have some free time at work (yes, work!), but I think it will take me a while.

What books should I put on my list this year? Well, how about The Gathering by Anne Enwright, which won the Man Booker prize last year. I think Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, too. What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman is recommended by one of the NYT reviewers here as well as Agent ZigZag by Ben Mcintyre. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene, although I read it in high school when it was universally reviled and I don’t know if my opinion of it was tainted by everyone’s ill opinion of it. (Especially since I have enjoyed several of Greene’s other novels.) Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver will be my local food book of the year, I hope, and maybe I should throw in Slow Food Nation by Carlo Pettrini. North Carolina is a great place for local, slow food. How many is that? Eight. Four more! Hmmm. Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje, because I usually like his writing, and I think I will take a new stab at Moby Dick. What’s something else old that I haven’t read? *digs about* Hmm, I’ve never finished Brothers Karamazov or Doctor Zhivago. That should round out my list.

If I read half of those, I’ll be doing pretty well.