Happy Birthday grok

Saturday, grok's friends and family (in the person of mai_neh) celebrated his thirty-eighth birthday with a great party. Many games were played. Many nice men were in attendance. I have photos here.

The photos were taken with my brand-new camera. I loaned my other camera to Eric to take with him on his trip to Japan, because his camera was only 2 megapixels vs. my 4 MP model and I had a large enough memory card that he shouldn't have to worry about filling it up. But then I remembered that I'm going on the annual canoe trip in a week or so and I really wanted to have a camera for that trip. So I trotted down to Best Buy and bought the Olympus Stylus 720SW , a 7MP shockproof and waterproof camera. I'm very pleased with it.

I tried to bring Dakota with me, but his library needed him to come in to cover for someone else and he needed the cash. Perhaps I can get him to come to another one sometime. I really haven't had any luck bringing men to these parties. I dunno why.

I arrived at the Wheaton metro station in time to accompany Tod on his beer run, and when we arrived back at the house, there were already a handful of people there. Roger had brought four large pans of lasagna; two pans had lamb, beef and pork and the others were a vegetarian lasagna. Doug had baked a home-made birthday cake for his beau and gregmce contributed yummy cupcakes.

Tod had asked that there be no gifts, but I had purchased an old paperback science-fiction novel over two months ago. Who could resist a sci-fi book with the title Manseed? I also brought along a Hello Kitty! marshmallow treat for Doug, although I doubt he'll ever eat it. I usually don't buy things for folks that they'll just end up tossing out, but it was cute and it was cheap. That's just my style.

Many games were played: Hello Kitty! Uno, Apples to Apples, Tongiaki, The Simpsons, Before I Kill You, Mr. Bond, Emperean... there may be more, but I can't remember. I narrowly won the Tongiaki game with a last minute push out to a few additional islands to achieve 26 points. The Emperean game I played wasn't completed because one of the players had to leave with his ride, which was too bad because it was a fun game.

As the evening wound down, those that were left sat around and chatted. Some snuggling was going on. It was very nice and relaxed. Eventually spiritquest drove me to the metro at about 12:30 a.m.

Sunday

Sunday, I traveled back to Baltimore for the afternoon to spend some time with Jeffrey. I got a late start and didn't arrive until after noon. I quickly met Russell at my apartment to give him a new key (the landlord changed the lock on my apartment), transferred birthday pictures to my computer, uploaded some of them to flickr and laid out my suit to take with me back to DC (more on that later).

So I met Jeffrey about 12:45 p.m. We had a lovely time catching up. I showed him the birthday pictures on my new camera and explained the concept of a game day to him. I'm going to try to bring him to one sometime. He plays bridge, and mai_neh is trying to grow our bridge group to two tables. I'm sure Jeffrey would really enjoy himself with them.

We had some lunch and finished watching the first season of Weeds. We really enjoy this series. The biggest disappointment is that each of the episodes is only thirty minutes long! The second season starts this week, so Jeffrey is going to TiVo and we'll watch it together Thursday night.

Since I had my new camera with me, I finally managed to get some photos of his viola da gamba. You can see them here. It really is a lovely instrument. I made my first date with Jeffrey back in january with the pretext of taking pictures of it, but we never got around to it!

I also showed him slothel's LiveJournal. Seth is a musician (clarinet) going to massage school. Jeffrey is a musician (viola da gamba) who is a massage therapist. He's also going to start teaching at his massage school this week, and reading about Seth's experiences in school will be useful to him. Seth is also a good writer. He's very amusing and tells great stories. His stories about the classes and students at the massage school are funny, but I also think Jeffrey was a little appalled at how they're running things.

So I left Jeffrey around 5:00 p.m. to stop by my apartment, gather up my stuff and head back to DC. I called Dakota to see if he'd like to get together, but he wasn't feeling well. I guess I should be happy to visit with one man a day, right? :-\

Whirlwind shopping trip

So I needed to grab my suit because my company has a mandatory company dinner in Annapolis this evening. Before I left my apartment Sunday, I made sure that I had my suit, shoes, belt and tie. I completely forgot about a dress shirt until I woke up this morning. Drat!

I ended up waiting until Filene's Basement at Metro Center opened up at 9:30 a.m. I quickly picked out a shirt and some dress socks, paid for my purchases and carried the shirt up to the dry cleaner's on an upper level to get it ironed or pressed. The lady there, who spoke very little English, told me that she could have it ready for me tomorrow. She seemed to be trying to explain that her steam iron would leave the shirt too wet for me to take it today or something. She eventually relented, and I returned to Filene's to use one of their fitting rooms to change into my suit. I made it back to Metro Center after only about thirty minutes for the entire shopping trip and back to the office by 11:00 a.m., only two and a half hours late.

But they're making me stay at a company function until at least 8:00 p.m. tonight, so I think it balances.

Hm.

I think I've made a date for Wednesday evening, but I can't remember who it might be. Could it be that I have an unscheduled evening?

Bah.

The company dinner doesn't start it 8:00 p.m. It starts at 5:30 p.m. And it lasts until 10:30 p.m.

Now I definitely don't care that I had to go shopping this morning.l