Exploring

After spending all day in baking heat at a track meet, 7:30 pm on Saturday saw me jetting home, showering quickly and doing the fastest scrub to black tie turnaround known to man. After getting home around 7:45, I'm shaved, showered, tuxedoed, rolled up and two drinks deep by the time I hit the city at 9.

The event of the evening is a company party for Glass. They've invited close to 1,600 people to dress black-tie, come and enjoy free food and a completely open bar (well, to be honest, throughout the venue there were about 15 open bars), all at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. For those that haven't been to the Exploratorium, it is a gigantic warehouse style building housing all manner of very fun and cool scientific exhibits and hands-on activities. It's basically a very large playground for kids. But when you turn the middle into the dance floor and then allow a bunch of inebriated adults to roam around, there's no telling what's going to happen.

We get there about an hour late due to my late arrival, and Glass does not shy away from walking in the first entrance she sees, which happens to be the caterers' entrance. We get inside and people are everywhere with food and drink in hand. The food ranged from shrimp and sushi to meat platters and main courses. The bar was completely open with just about anything you would want to drink. Seizing on the opportunity, I tell the first bartender I see to take me to that Island I like....the Long Island. We mix and mingle for a while, sporadically playing games or fooling around with the numerous exhibits available. The DJ is sick, playing almost exclusively mash-ups, the variety of which is impressive even to me.

As the evening winds down, they start closing up the place and everyone pours out into the street to grab cabs to the next destination. Turns out the company has set up guest lists at a number of clubs so I call Maurod who takes us over to Gravity where the place is packed, mainly with people still wearing their tuxedos and masks from the party. We last about 15 minutes there before we decide to get out of the stuffy corporate atmosphere and head over to meet E at the I. Never a bad idea. Of course, in my tuxedo, I do look a bit out of place, but E seems to enjoy this. We get there a bit before last call, pound a drink and get back with Maurod to take us back to the Marina where it's Pizza Pino at 2 in the morning.

Yes, that's me drinking water from a toilet bowl, and no, I wasn't drunk at this point...they had a series of "mental challenges" that included a water fountain in a toilet bowl, a ladder to walk under, etc...meant to show that some people will shy away from these things due to superstition, even if they know from the set-up that it's safe. I obviously don't have these types of concerns...