Last Friday night around 8 pm, the Houston Museum of Natural Science was packed with young people. Club music thumped, and a gaggle of food trucks were parked out front. So far so good. Inside, however, there was quite a bit of confusion at times.

LaB 5555, HMNS’s revamping of their young-professionalish summer mixers once known as “Mixers and Elixirs,” launched earlier this summer, and Friday night’s event was packed. So packed, in fact, that the whole “science” theme of the event, “Mixology” was totally lost on me. From the grumbling I heard in the cash bar line, it was lost on quite a few others as well.

Silly me, thinking that the “hot science topic” of “the chemistry of a good cocktail” actually meant that I would get to 1) sample a unique cocktail at the event and perhaps even 2) learn about this “hot science topic” in the process. However, I can’t complain too much as my two entry tickets (worth $20 a piece) were on the house as a media guest.

So, why didn’t I get to try one of the cocktails specially formulated for the event by Mongoose vs. Cobra, Haven, El Gran Malo or Liberty Kitchen? Because once we arrived at the event, only 10 minutes after the special “Mixology” hour began at 8 pm, the lines were 15 minutes long and after waiting in one, I found out there were special drink tickets that had been “pre-sold” according to the bartenders in the special “mixology” section.

Not sure where to find or buy said drink tickets, I found the public relations director for the museum to ask where I might buy these tickets so I’d have something to write about for the food and beverage publication I was representing for the evening. Even she had no clue what I was talking about (as did many other people who’d come to try the cocktails and couldn’t find the special drink tickets).

Not one piece of advertising for the LaB 5555 event mentioned these special drink tickets – part of a contest/voting set-up, it turns out – and no one at the actual event other than the bartenders seemed to know what I was asking about. Yet somehow, people did have tickets and were able to taste the “science” part of the evening. Maybe they were in some kind of secret cocktail society I don’t belong to? Checking back on the website later, I noted that “The first 200 peeps that show at the box office get a fabulously geeky gift.” I’m guessing the free drink tickets and voting buttons were the gift.

Despite missing out on the entire theme of the evening, I managed to make it through the 20-minute long wait at the common man’s cash bar out front and ducked back into the Hall of Paleontology. All the earlier frustration of cocktail chaos melted as I sipped my gin rickey, made my way through the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods and relished the fact that I was able to sip an adult beverage while gazing at the skeletons of some of the most majestic and terrifying creatures that ever walked the earth. That was all the science I needed.

And as for cocktails, I got my fix later that evening when I made it down Montrose the few blocks to Banks Street where Grand Prize bar greeted me with its warm familiarity and a frozen Aviation. No elusive drink tickets required.