Posts tagged with "parties"

Bobby's number two

I’ve been itch­ing to play around with some new footage late­ly cause I love edit­ing and it’s been a while since I had a good sto­ry to tell, so when Tiana invit­ed me to Bobby’s sec­ond birth­day par­ty, I could­n’t resist. I also recent­ly pur­chased some new gear in prepa­ra­tion of a wed­ding I’ve been hired to film in the Fall (with a sec­ond one poten­tial­ly lined up), and I’ve been look­ing for an oppor­tu­ni­ty to field-test a new bag, shoul­der strap, and mono­pod.

I tend to get real­ly shy at Tiana’s par­ties cause I feel like I’m the only one who does­n’t know any­one else there, but she does a good job of mak­ing sure I’m nev­er left alone for too long and includ­ed in most con­ver­sa­tions. She’s also the only oth­er per­son I know to actu­al­ly design cus­tom invi­ta­tions. This time, how­ev­er, she was sport­ing a perky new hair­cut, and no longer a veg­e­tar­i­an (for now). Such is the pow­er of St. Hubert.

Continue read­ing “Bobby’s num­ber two”…

Cranium Party, the Third

So out of the 26 peo­ple I invit­ed to the third Cranium Party, 9 said they could­n’t make it, 13 said they’d come, and 4 did­n’t RSVP at all.

Out of the 13 peo­ple who said they’d come, only 3 of them showed up, and one of those was Jessica, who was sort of co-host­ing this one with me, so fuck yeah she was there1.

That means that includ­ing me, we had four peo­ple, which is the bare min­i­mum to play Cranium.

To say I was dis­ap­point­ed is an under­state­ment. I spent a great deal of time and ener­gy mak­ing the invi­ta­tions, and clean­ing the house so my guests could be com­fort­able. Not to men­tion all the food I bought, most of which went bad because there weren’t enough peo­ple to eat it (and espe­cial­ly when the guests who do show up also bring plen­ty of snacks).

We did end up play­ing a good game, but it was entire­ly not worth all the prepa­ra­tion.

Jessica offered to host the next one at her place — very nice of her because that real­ly means she’s offer­ing to shoul­der all the respon­si­bil­i­ties — but I feel like Cranium par­ties are my thing. An invi­ta­tion is not only an invi­ta­tion to play, it’s an invi­ta­tion into my social cir­cle. The guest list is tight­ly con­trolled; any­one on it is either a very close friend, or some­one I can tell has the poten­tial to be. I want to have all the respon­si­bil­i­ty, because it’s one of the ways I can show these peo­ple they’re impor­tant to me.

At the same time, some peo­ple are already ask­ing about the next one2, which I find strange because the impres­sion I get is that it’s a low pri­or­i­ty, nev­er some­thing peo­ple put in their sched­ule and plan around. I’m pret­ty sure most only go if noth­ing else comes up on that day.

That’s fine by me — not every­one loves doing bad impres­sions of Christopher Walken as much as I do — but when peo­ple say they’re going to be there and don’t show up, it’s a com­plete deval­u­a­tion of my efforts. I’m seri­ous­ly ques­tion­ing if I’m going to host anoth­er Cranium par­ty any time soon. If I do, the next invite list will undoubt­ed­ly be much short­er.

At the very least, the day was sal­vaged with some bub­ble tea, Chinese food, and qual­i­ty time with Jessica.

  1. She’s also the only per­son to make it to all Cranium par­ties up to now. [↩]
  2. I pur­pose­ly don’t make them a reg­u­lar thing because I want them to be spe­cial. [↩]

Audra's 34th

For Audra’s birth­day we head­ed to the Savana Cafe, with some choco­late ice cream cake at the William’s res­i­dence after leav­ing the very rude ser­vice we were giv­en.

I also got to meet Jesse’s dad, Jim. He reminds me very much of his son in terms of their intel­lect and inter­ests, and I found it quite nov­el to talk to an old­er ver­sion of Jesse with a soft voice and grey facial hair.

Dinner table

Across the table is Jesse, Caitlyn, Ariel, Ira, and Jairus. Jesse’s dad to my right.

Continue read­ing “Audra’s 34th”…

Cranium Party 02

Cranium Party invitation

The sec­ond Cranium Party went exceed­ing­ly well, even though not a sin­gle one of my core friends was there. In fact, aside from Jess, it was an entire­ly dif­fer­ent group from last time, and none of the four groups of peo­ple knew each oth­er, but that did­n’t stop it from being an awe­some par­ty and every­one got along famous­ly. Through the night, I heard peo­ple ask­ing each oth­er, “And how do you know Jeff?”

People brought all sorts of snacks, but more impor­tant­ly, they also helped me eat them. Of note was Audra bring­ing a tub of green tea and hon­ey vanil­la Häagen-Dazs ice cream, which I had nev­er even heard of before.

To make it inter­est­ing, I told every­one that the los­ing team would have to per­form a tal­ent. Some came pre­pared, oth­ers came with the atti­tude that they would­n’t lose.

Audra’s tal­ent is speech writ­ing, but since she could­n’t per­form that, she did a ren­di­tion of a song she wrote with Jesse three years ago about their cat Zoey. And the song was­n’t just a short jin­gle, it was a full piece with prop­er song struc­ture and clever rhymes. If only I was­n’t laugh­ing so hard that I kept shak­ing the cam­era.

Sergei did­n’t have a tal­ent pre­pared, but since I knew that he used to study mar­tial arts, I asked him if he could demon­strate what he knew. He sug­gest­ed that he could blow out a can­dle with a punch, and no one was left unmoved.

Shawn brought his beau­ti­ful­ly carved didgeri­doo to play as his tal­ent. Even though he did­n’t lose, peo­ple were still intrigued enough that they want­ed to try it. And, of course, Jesse added his own flavour at the end.