Kelly and Shiaw-Ling have the same birthday, 21 years apart, so more often than not, they’ve had their birthday parties on the same weekend. This year, Shiaw-Ling found out that the Hayes Mansion would give us a space in which to have a party, as long as we paid for catering. Shiaw-Ling also wanted to have a Mad Science party. The Hayes Mansion is used to catering to adults. Mad Science is used to giving parties for underage children, rather than playful 20-somethings. So, we decided to combine the girls’ birthday parties so we could mix up the fancy-schmancy with the kiddie science show.
The catering was still pretty pricey, but then neither Shiaw-Ling or I had known how much volume of food the mansion calculates per person. As we arrived, we were shocked by the volume of food we’d bought–and we thought we’d bought conservatively. So, needless to say, we had plenty of food to feed our friends, and then some.
We went all out on a Mad Science event, and Mad Science delivered two hours of theatrical experiments, like bubbling dry ice potions:
Some people came dressed appropriately as mad scientists,
and others (I’m pointing my finger at the 6-year-old girls) took turns appropriating Shiaw-Ling’s mad scientist goggles:
I did my part by telling Matt, Ichi, and Constantine all about the wonders and glory of mobile web widgets. Oooo, mobile web widgets are the future! Or, we could talk about femtocells! Ichi seemed intrigued. Matt confessed he wanted to send a Motorola Droid into outer space, especially if he could find someone to pay him to do it (FYI, that’s not me). Constantine reminded me he has other things to do, like his job.
After the mad science was over, and most of the 6-and-under crowd had gone home, Shiaw-Ling decamped from our party room into a hotel room in the mansion, where the party would go on with watching Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, and a night of playing Star Wars games. Neil stayed behind for the after party.
Peter and I recruited Ben to help us take our decorations (such as our spotlights) back, but this required a long walk around to the side of the mansion where there was a ramp. There, we discovered another event that was going on that night: PACE was having its annual auction and fundraiser at the mansion, with a 20s theme.
Here are some guests dressed for the event:
and one of the classic cars that had been parked alongside the mansion:
It was a lot of fun, but I don’t know if we’ll ever have such a fancy event again, at least not for a birthday!