Posts tagged with "parties"

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.

Night Of Black Magic

Bunny

Thumbnail: Lloyd and Felicetta
Thumbnail: Patti and Chris
Thumbnail: Me and Lloyd
Thumbnail: Mike
Thumbnail: Trying on hat

Thumbnail: Dark ritual

I was invit­ed to a night of black mag­ic (as well as some tasty antipas­to), and I did­n’t know what to expect. Part of the instruc­tions were to bring a large piece of con­struc­tion paper, a white pen­cil cray­on, and a piece of paper with some­thing writ­ten on it that I want to be rid of in my life. Turns out the con­struc­tion paper was to make our hats and chains, and the pen­cil cray­on was to fash­ion said hats and chains with our pow­er sym­bols (some­thing with mean­ing to each per­son). I was also giv­en a phrase to mem­o­rize and incant dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny.

There were glow sticks, good food1, and great peo­ple. I won’t go into details about the rit­u­al, for reveal­ing too much, as I under­stand it, is akin to telling peo­ple your birth­day wish. Needless to say, I hope to wake up to some growth down south (aka expan­sion to drilling oper­a­tions in the wildlife pre­serve) one of these days, if you catch my drift.

  1. I got to try some kind of home­made peach juice, which was a thick as glyc­erin, but very tasty. [↩]

Birthday Weekend

At The Japanese Village

I prob­a­bly looked like this the whole week­end, cause it was non-stop awe­some­ness.

The Japanese Village

Last week, Aaron asked me if I want­ed to go to The Japanese Village. I thought it was just to hang out, since we had­n’t had a guy’s night in a while, so I did­n’t clue in that it was for my birth­day until the day of. Aaron told me I could order any­thing I want, as it was his treat, but I ordered the only thing I ever get when I’m there; the filet mignon cooked medi­um rare, which I think is the best in the city. It was good to hang out with him and Trolley again.

And, of course, silli­ness is always present with these guys around.

____ in town

Chilling on the couch

____’s been work­ing two straight months, with­out a week­end off. The last time was when he came to Ottawa to vis­it. Between all the activ­i­ties, we only had enough time to watch one movie — American Graffiti — and between the two of us, we could sing every song that came from this film based in the 60s (me cov­er­ing The Platters, him cov­er­ing every­thing else).

I usu­al­ly only get to see him once a year, so twice in two months was a spe­cial treat.

Cranium Party

I’d love to do games nights on a reg­u­lar basis, but peo­ple aren’t avail­able on the same days, so I used my birth­day as an excuse to get as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble togeth­er for a giant Cranium par­ty. I told them that instead of giv­ing me a present, they should just come to the par­ty. It worked, and we had enough for four teams of three. Some peo­ple also brought snacks, like hon­ey mus­tard pret­zels, car­rot cup­cakes, and fresh­ly baked choco­late chip cook­ies.

It was the high­light of the week­end.

Dim sum with my dad

John and dad at dim sum

On Friday, my dad called me to wish me a hap­py birth­day, and told me he was in town for 10 days. We made plans to have dim sum. ____ came too, which is always inter­est­ing to see his reac­tions to what food is as the token white guy. I had a phoenix talons for the first time1, because I was feel­ing adven­tur­ous, and I have to say that they weren’t bad, but I did­n’t care for them either. They’re too hard to eat, and the sauce was­n’t to my taste. It was strange to see both John and my dad at the same place, and in Ottawa instead of Toronto.

I told my dad he could prob­a­bly sit and observe one of my Tai Chi class­es, so he could see what I do, but he was­n’t inter­est­ed, and I’ll admit that the indif­fer­ence hurt a bit. Afterward, I asked John what he thought as a 3rd par­ty observ­er, and he told me I had a good rela­tion­ship with my dad. I’ll take his word for it.

I needed this

I need­ed this week­end so much. To recharge. To stop think­ing about things. To get com­plete­ly wast­ed. It felt like it was my birth­day the whole week­end, and I won­dered what I did to deserve it all.

  1. It was­n’t the taste, but the look that has always pre­vent­ed me from try­ing them. [↩]