So, last night was our exciting night out.  I had a couple of gift certificates burning a hole in my pocket, so we went first to City Steam for dinner, and then to Vaughan's for dessert.  Needless to say, I made sure not to fill up at dinner, so that I had plenty of room for this pretty.  (Remember, I can't have the ice cream and Irish cream that normally comes with it!)

That is a huge 14" dinner plate, and the brownie is about 6" x 4".  Needless to say, even with saving room, I still had half the brownie to take home for today!

Then we made our way over to the Bushnell for the screening.  I missed the turn I was supposed to take, and ended up backtracking a bit, and as I was doing that, I ended up in a left hand turn lane for the wrong road.  There was almost no traffic, so I figured I'd just make the turn and go around the block or something, but when I went a block over, it turns out I was exactly where I wanted to be!  Score!  We quickly parked, and as we were walking in, we saw the traffic on the road I was *trying* to get on to was horrible b/c of the screening, so my cluelessness actually worked in my favor!  There was a lot of hoopla at the Bushnell for the screening--they had a big inflateable Yeti monster and all sorts of cars with graphic wraps promoting the film, plus a lot of displays about skiing.  Even for being the late show it was a madhouse.

Now, I've been to the Bushnell at least 3 times, and not always for BNL.  (Honest!)  But I've always ended up with orchestra seats.  Call me a spoiled weasel.  So as it turns out, I have no clue where you go to get into the balcony.  (Hint:  It's NOT the only obvious staircase labeled "Mezzanine")  Dean and I wandered around in circles for about five minutes, then spent another five minutes waiting for an elevator that never arrived.  Finally we asked an employee, who proceeded to lead us all the way back down stairs, and over to a somewhat hidden, essentially unmarked stairway.  You don't think that was intentional, putting the lower class Balcony folks with their own separate entrance, now do you?

The screen was miles away from us, and when the movie started, it was really hard to hear the dialogue b/c the sound was a bit muffled up where we were.  Not to mention the young inebriated guys ahead of us, who were stoked, stoked I tell you for the film to start, and then proceeded to alternate between taking nips off the bottle of vodka they had smuggled in and getting up to go out to the bar.  I don't think they made it through a segment without having to get up.  It really wasn't the right way to see the movie for us, and while I enjoyed seeing some of the crazy stunts, I decided I'd rather just wait to get the dvd to finish watching it.  As for the Yukon segment, it was fun but a little disjointed and choppy.  Although I could probably make the same argument about the rest of the film.  I found myself wishing that they'd actually take a little more time to delve into the people they were showcasing, as many of them were really interesting.  Warren must have skipped filmmaking school on the day where they taught that keeping things constantly on an extreme "high" devalues the highs, and turns them into just a loud boring medium. 

Anyway, given that we had such a lousy view and we really were starting to tire of beautifully composed, amazing skiing shots, we decided to book it at intermission.  We went down a different staircase, and luckily we intended on leaving, b/c it dumped us out on the street, not in the lobby.  I was amazed to see how many people actually were leaving at intermission.  There must have been 10 or 15 other folks hiking it out.  I was very surprised at the numbers.  We went home, I poured myself a glass of wine, and we watched video from the Yukon show.  Somehow I think that ending was better than what the film would have had...