Darwin Day festivities!

Darwin Day signature drink: Primordial Booze!

I had my Darwin Day celebration last night since today I'm going to be at work until about midnight. Tonight is also the release of the very anticipated Dead Pool movie and Zoolander 2, so Darwin Day has been extremely over shadowed. Most of my friends went out to see Dead Pool for the midnight/early release, so my social media has been exploding with that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm also very excited about both of those movies and cannot wait to see them, but Darwin Day is my own little holiday and I take it mildly seriously.
Mildly because I haven't put real blood, sweat and tears into pulling off a grand event just yet, because I always have Jess and/or Shen to celebrate with.

Darwin Day isn't a big deal for the group of people I hang out with, because they accept evolution as a scientific fact, so they're not passionate about the importance of it. Which is awesome, because I have friends who are scientifically literate. I understand not wanting to throw a party about a dusty old man who obsessed over beetles and finches unless you are a huge dork with an unreasonable appetite for the science behind evolution.
I get it.
I guess it falls into the wildly cliche "If you're in love you want to tell the whole world" saying. I want to share this amazing connection we have to the rest of the animal kingdom and the planet with everyone, because I'm just still so madly in love with that fact. I want to celebrate, learn and drink green alcoholic beverages with some of my favorite fellow apes.

Though the box office media has stolen my tiny little bit of spotlight that I usually hog during this time in February, last night was still a lot of fun. We made dinosaur fossil cookies, which I know isn't Darwinian anything but whatever, some chocolate-cinnamon-cayenne pepper cupcakes, and Jess made some super yummy BBQ pinwheels. Oh, and of course, we mixed up some Primordial Booze.
WE ATE LIKE KINGS.
I also made a point of taking a couple pictures of our festivities since I realize how many pictures I'm not taking of these events.



We decided to go with Sir David Attenborough's Darwin and the Tree of Life series to start and finished the evening with an episode from the new Cosmos series with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. I wanted to stay out longer and watch the BBC drama I mentioned about in my last post, but I'm still trying to recover from a nasty cold.
I'm actually still feeling pretty awful so I'm taking it extremely easy today until I go to work around 15:00. I got plenty of sleep and am sitting in my recliner drinking water, wanting to take a nap. I'd actually kill for a cup of coffee or tea right now, but I'm sadly out and don't have the energy to go to the store.

I'm pretty sure he took a bite out of one of them....

I had brought along my trex, who has been officially named Skepasaurus because of his judging sideways glance, to help me make the dinosaur fossil cookies. Those cute little therapod tracks you see in those cookies are non other that him. He was kind of the mascot last night during most of our antics, but eventually found and made friends with Jess's tardigrade, or "waterbear".

Thus this adorable picture happened.

Trex and his tardi-bear

LOOK HOW HAPPY HE IS. I CAN'T DEAL.

While the entire night was a blast, that picture is definitely the highlight of the evening. We've set the bar yet again for my expectations for future Darwin Day events!

Next year, I think I am going to try and put together a big celebration. It really bums me out that there aren't big Darwin Day events happening in the DFW area, considering that Dallas has one of the best natural history museums. Despite this being Texas and part of a the "Bible Belt", DFW is not an overly Godly or anti-science area from what I can tell.
Which makes me feel like putting together an event like this wouldn't be too terrible hard. I thin if Austin can have some cool Darwin Day stuff, we should be able to make on happen too.
Next year goals...let's see if they happen like I'd like. A lot can happen in a year, so lets put a pin it it, shall we?

If you'd like some good links to videos to watch and/or book recommendations for Darwin Day, you can get both from my previous Darwin Day post which has all of those.

Happy Darwin Day, guys!

-M