I love the nightlife. I got to bougainvillea.

Last Thursday night was the premiere evening for Nightlife at the Academy (The California Academy of Sciences). Advance tickets were sold out, but Shilpa and Yarbrough got in line around 4:00 and snagged us some of the few "day of" tickets available.

Shilpa and Stephen were about the sixth people in line to get in.

And first in line at the bar.

Huge surprise.

Typical to these sorts of functions, the drinks were laaaaame. Seriously, straight cater/waiters cannot pour a decent cocktail. We have been spoiled in the Castro. The catering company failed on two other levels too: (1) straws and stir sticks should not be shorter than the depth of the cups or pour level and (2) the uber-environmental Academy required compostable cups and provided compost bins everywhere, but the drink straws/stirrers/skewers--included in every cup and so shorts as not to be easily removed--were not compostable. So all cups discarded in the "proper" bin screwed up the whole composting effort by including non-compostable plastics.

We did love the new Academy though. Very cool, even if the environmental/carbon footprint/eco-friendly exhibits now seem to take up half of the space leaving less for the cool science-y exhibits.

We did learn some new things. Like that the T-Rex is the number one threat

to California's biodiversity.

Curse those dinosaurs!!

I thought this sign was kind of funny, as clearly there has been some behavior to necessitate the sign:

Until Yarbrough tripped over the protruding rock base and nearly fell completely into the diorama, cocktail first.

The best parts of the new CalAcademy? The enclosed rainforest (although it did play havoc with a certain someone's hair)

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and the renovated aquarium. I miss the old one where the fish swam around you, but walking under this aquarium is very cool too.

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* Alternate caption: Stephen and Shilpa order their entrees from the menu.

Shilpa got us tickets to the planetarium show and we were pretty excited for that.

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Sadly, the woman giving the show was beyond terrible. So bad. It was a painful experience. I'm sure that she's smart and can contribute to the Academy of Sciences in other ways, but she should never be allowed to give another planetarium show. Awful, awful, awful.

All the way around though, it was a good opening Nightlife night. Followed by dinner and dancing the Castro, naturally.



And more mocking of Yarbrough's gleaming white smile.



Drama ensued. Except for lil' ole me who had to be up and alert early Friday morning for five hours of grueling meetings.

Happily followed by a mellow if soaking three-day weekend.