Friday Night Out on the Town
Jun. 21st, 2008 08:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
perzephone
Rob & I actually went out on a Friday night, that night being last night. It was a big huge reminder of why we don't normally engage in that sort of behavior.
There's a fairly new shopping center waaaaaaay south on Las Vegas Blvd., past the Mandalay Bay/Four Seasons, past Frye's Electronics, called Turnberry Square. It's huge, but it is a nice sort of outdoor mall, has a state-of-the-arts movie theater, bars, restaurants and higher-end clothing stores. Karl's last day at the DA's office was yesterday, so they whined me into making an appearance at the Yard House. It was a long drive and the place was packed by the time we got there (5:30 pm). They do have a novelty that I might be tempted into trying at some point - draft beer ice cream floats. We chummed around the edges of the party tables, I had a beer, Rob had a coke & then we got the Hel out of there. Right before we left the waitress had come over & asked how many more people they were expecting to show up because it was an hour & a half wait for a table - and it was only like, 6:15.
Since we were waaaaaay down on that side of town, Rob mentioned the Mandalay Bay Shark Reef had a Komodo dragon on display, so we decided to pay it a visit. I do kind of lessen my stance on zoos & circuses when it comes to aquariums, and I still hold a grudge against the Shark Reef for killing that hammerhead shark they had - she was beautiful, but how often do you get to see a Komodo dragon up close and personal? So I said, sure, let's go. Much like the Yard House, the MB was fucking packed, but I felt more comfortable because unlike a bar, people can spread out in a casino. The golden crocodile was sleeping. The Komodo dragon had wedged itself into a corner of its enclosure (which is waaaaaay too tiny - all the Shark Reef enclosures are tiny) that offered the least amount of exposure to prying eyes. It was also dozing, but it did open its eyes to take a look around. I've never seen a lizard's eye quite like the Komodo's - instead of being light-colored to match its scales, it was like looking into a deep black ink pool. It was kind of nerve-wracking in a way. I like Komodo's in the way that I like other reptiles, but honestly the monitor lizards make me nervous. This particular one didn't look happy at all to be where it was. We continued on to look at all the awesome fish - arawanas, arapimas, pacu the size of tires, true piranha (the piranha are in a low open tank, so one of the employees has to stand there to prevent people from sticking their hands (or small children) in the water), saw all the bright, colorful reef fish - parrotfish, a puffer... lionfish, which are incredibly beautiful. They've got a tunnel where you walk through from the reef fish to the shark tanks, and shark swim overhead. In the big shark tanks are bigger sharks. It seemed funny to me that when the sharks would swim by the glass, they seemed to all be at the eye level of the little kids in the exhibit.
Sharks are amazing to me, but some of them make me quite nervous. Walking through the tunnel, Rob noticed that they were swimming in packs, and performed something like a flanking maneuver - one would split off, swim in a wider circle & then double back suddenly. Once we got to the bigger tanks, a couple of the sharks were off in the murkier depths of the tanks, just hanging in the water like toothy ghosts. Just looking at them, silent, virtually motionless and only giving a hint of exactly how big they were made me feel like prey. Sharks seem to be able to convey a message of, "You're not really the top of the food chain, yanno". They've got sea turtles in there now, and that was pretty cool, watching them flying around in the tanks.
We saw the octopus, and it looks incredibly bored. They have no enrichment in any of the tanks. The jellyfish are pretty to watch when you're not worried about them being swept between your thighs by an incoming wave. They flip upside down and spread open like stinging flowers. We stood by the 'pet a stingray' tank for awhile, til it got too crowded - most of the rays have discovered how to remain in the center of the tank where no one can reach them, but some do get bored and will swim by the edges. It took Rob a lot of nerve to reach in & touch one. Once he finally did, it started a stampede of rays to our side of the tank, but they all swept by us & settled right under where a little girl was standing. The rays were all just looking up at her like, "Awwww, she's so cute!" The rays were still there when we finally wandered away.
Rob's never been to a 'real' zoo before, so I may have to loosen my cruelty-to-animals stance & drag him to the San Diego Zoo or something. Rob missed out on doing a lot of cool shit when he was a kid because his family lived so far away and his parents were so agoraphobic.
We even shopped a little - Rob got his dad a bobble-head shark. I was like, "Hey, that's hours of free entertainment for your dad - as long as he holds it, that thing's head will never stop bobbling!" Yeah, I'm coming back as a slug.
There's a fairly new shopping center waaaaaaay south on Las Vegas Blvd., past the Mandalay Bay/Four Seasons, past Frye's Electronics, called Turnberry Square. It's huge, but it is a nice sort of outdoor mall, has a state-of-the-arts movie theater, bars, restaurants and higher-end clothing stores. Karl's last day at the DA's office was yesterday, so they whined me into making an appearance at the Yard House. It was a long drive and the place was packed by the time we got there (5:30 pm). They do have a novelty that I might be tempted into trying at some point - draft beer ice cream floats. We chummed around the edges of the party tables, I had a beer, Rob had a coke & then we got the Hel out of there. Right before we left the waitress had come over & asked how many more people they were expecting to show up because it was an hour & a half wait for a table - and it was only like, 6:15.
Since we were waaaaaay down on that side of town, Rob mentioned the Mandalay Bay Shark Reef had a Komodo dragon on display, so we decided to pay it a visit. I do kind of lessen my stance on zoos & circuses when it comes to aquariums, and I still hold a grudge against the Shark Reef for killing that hammerhead shark they had - she was beautiful, but how often do you get to see a Komodo dragon up close and personal? So I said, sure, let's go. Much like the Yard House, the MB was fucking packed, but I felt more comfortable because unlike a bar, people can spread out in a casino. The golden crocodile was sleeping. The Komodo dragon had wedged itself into a corner of its enclosure (which is waaaaaay too tiny - all the Shark Reef enclosures are tiny) that offered the least amount of exposure to prying eyes. It was also dozing, but it did open its eyes to take a look around. I've never seen a lizard's eye quite like the Komodo's - instead of being light-colored to match its scales, it was like looking into a deep black ink pool. It was kind of nerve-wracking in a way. I like Komodo's in the way that I like other reptiles, but honestly the monitor lizards make me nervous. This particular one didn't look happy at all to be where it was. We continued on to look at all the awesome fish - arawanas, arapimas, pacu the size of tires, true piranha (the piranha are in a low open tank, so one of the employees has to stand there to prevent people from sticking their hands (or small children) in the water), saw all the bright, colorful reef fish - parrotfish, a puffer... lionfish, which are incredibly beautiful. They've got a tunnel where you walk through from the reef fish to the shark tanks, and shark swim overhead. In the big shark tanks are bigger sharks. It seemed funny to me that when the sharks would swim by the glass, they seemed to all be at the eye level of the little kids in the exhibit.
Sharks are amazing to me, but some of them make me quite nervous. Walking through the tunnel, Rob noticed that they were swimming in packs, and performed something like a flanking maneuver - one would split off, swim in a wider circle & then double back suddenly. Once we got to the bigger tanks, a couple of the sharks were off in the murkier depths of the tanks, just hanging in the water like toothy ghosts. Just looking at them, silent, virtually motionless and only giving a hint of exactly how big they were made me feel like prey. Sharks seem to be able to convey a message of, "You're not really the top of the food chain, yanno". They've got sea turtles in there now, and that was pretty cool, watching them flying around in the tanks.
We saw the octopus, and it looks incredibly bored. They have no enrichment in any of the tanks. The jellyfish are pretty to watch when you're not worried about them being swept between your thighs by an incoming wave. They flip upside down and spread open like stinging flowers. We stood by the 'pet a stingray' tank for awhile, til it got too crowded - most of the rays have discovered how to remain in the center of the tank where no one can reach them, but some do get bored and will swim by the edges. It took Rob a lot of nerve to reach in & touch one. Once he finally did, it started a stampede of rays to our side of the tank, but they all swept by us & settled right under where a little girl was standing. The rays were all just looking up at her like, "Awwww, she's so cute!" The rays were still there when we finally wandered away.
Rob's never been to a 'real' zoo before, so I may have to loosen my cruelty-to-animals stance & drag him to the San Diego Zoo or something. Rob missed out on doing a lot of cool shit when he was a kid because his family lived so far away and his parents were so agoraphobic.
We even shopped a little - Rob got his dad a bobble-head shark. I was like, "Hey, that's hours of free entertainment for your dad - as long as he holds it, that thing's head will never stop bobbling!" Yeah, I'm coming back as a slug.
