MY SPECIAL NIGHT

I am very lucky that my son and his girlfriend are employees of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  They work the overnight "camping" events and there happened to be one on my birthday last Saturday.  I received a special invite to come along and tour the whole place at night, when it was pretty much empty.

Wow.  Anyone who has been to this aquarium or any other very popular museum or exhibit, knows that it is sometimes hard to see everything and especially to linger where you might like when visiting these places.  Saturday night I wandered and meandered and stood spellbound for as long as I liked over the jellyfish and the seahorses and tried to wait out the octopus's shyness.  Even cooler, later in the evening I got to go on a behind the scenes tour of some of the exhibits, see the home of the albatross which lives on the roof, hear the rescued otters smashing abalone shells to get to their dinner (they keep them out of sight of humans so they don't associate food with us and can safely be returned to the wild) and hear many stories about funny things that happen around the place - lots of intruders and escapees!

After I was worn out from touring, I went to a nice little hotel down the road which had a Jacuzzi tub and basked in the bubbles for a good long time, got into my pj's and had a long sleep. Woke up to a massive rain storm so I stayed put until Zac and Liz were done with their campers then we braved the storm and went to a cafe with a wood burning fireplace and had the most delicious tea before I went off into the rain to drive home.

There were a couple of casualties, though.  My cell phone was in my pocket and got wet in the rain and stopped working and even my camera got wet and lost the photos I took.  I think the camera is going to recover. The cell phone will be replaced with the new smart phones Tom is getting for the whole family as a Christmas gift.  Pretty good timing for getting drenched, I guess!  I will be much more careful of my phone in the rain from now on.