To cov­er three birth­days (Pat’s, Aaron’s, and Karen’s respec­tive­ly), we all met up at McEwen along the riv­er. The mer­ri­ment con­sist­ed of some light drink­ing, friend­ly pok­er play­ing, and rather seri­ous pho­to tak­ing.

They say that the rud­er you are, the bet­ter a pho­tog­ra­ph­er it makes you. Since being rude goes against the very basis of my per­son­al­i­ty, get­ting can­dids of peo­ple with a large cam­era and flash becomes quite a men­tal chal­lenge. Some peo­ple real­ly don’t like to have their pic­ture tak­en, and they sig­nal this by blink­ing rapid­ly with bewil­der­ment, com­bined with the fur­row­ing of their brows in annoy­ance. This reminds me that I pri­mar­i­ly bought a cam­era to have mem­o­ries of my friends, who are all com­fort­able with my paparaz­zo ten­den­cies. It cer­tain­ly makes me appre­ci­ate the strangers or acquain­tances who don’t mind.

It was also a hap­pen­stance meet­ing of the four boss­es, although def­i­nite­ly not the pri­vate affair that it usu­al­ly is.