Ladies and gentlemen, it's a wonderful life.
Every year, my birthday falls in the middle of exam weekend. It makes scheduling an absolute nightmare. This year was even worse, because several of my dearest friends are all in the same a capella group, which conveniently scheduled its Christmas party for the night of the ninth. One of them was leaving for home the next morning, so the only way to get everyone there was to work around the aforementioned party. The plan was to go out to eat together at a fancy Italian place, then those of us who are not singing extraordinaires could go to Danielle's place and watch a movie while the others went to their Christmas party.
An hour and a half before I was supposed to be ready to go, two of them kidnapped me, threw me in a car, and sped away quickly. It was actually a lot less melodramatic than that... I needed to go to the bank, so they picked me up early. Then he missed the bank turnoff. And kept driving. Out of town. To a sketchy little strip mall.
We spent the next hour roaming around in a wonderful, magical, giant, booth-style antique store that is basically located in the attic of a Staples. It was like stepping back in time. There were whole sections full of beautiful books that filled the air with paper dust when you flipped through them. We barely had time to scrape the surface of this wonderful treasure trove before we had to leave in a mad rush to get to the restaurant on time.
We had all been seated at the table for about two minutes when one of my friends realized that there was paper on top of the white tablecloth. Immediately, she pulled out her pen and began to doodle. Everyone else followed suit. And so it was that fourteen fancy college students sat and graffitied the table while the waitress took their orders. There were hangman wars, portrait drawing contests, and tic-tac-toe battles. The food got there, and we all ate off of each others' plates. Then someone ordered an amazing slab of tiramisu slathered in chocolate syrup and topped with a single candle. She accidentally took it to the wrong person, which garnered laughs all around. I blew out the candle (repeatedly, as one of my friends felt it should be blown out 21 times in honor of the day) and took a bite. Then I passed it to my right, and there was enough for everyone to enjoy some.
After dinner, those of us who were going to Danielle's piled into our separate carpool caravans and headed that direction. Mine was the first to arrive. As we sat outside her house in the car waiting for her to get there, a man carrying a suitcase climbed out of a large white truck and walked up to her house. Then he went inside. Wondering whether or not she was being robbed blind, we got out of the car and sidled up to the door. Luckily, she pulled in several houses down right before we got to the porch and saved us the embarrassment of demanding to know why someone had entered a house that they probably had every right to be in.
The original plan had been to watch The Godfather III that night. I've seen the first two and wanted to finish out the trilogy. As a backup, David had also brought Saving Private Ryan. Both movies were vetoed by other people in attendance, and we ended up flipping aimlessly through the channels and watching TLC shows. The entertainment was in the company anyway; I appreciated the chance to simply exist in the same room as my friends without some pressing matter banging on the inside of my subconscious. Danielle made a delectable dessert to finish off the night, and we all went home a little after midnight thoroughly stuffed and happy.
The next morning, I clawed my way out of bed before the sun even thought about rising. At seven, I met several Kennedy residents (mostly mine) and David in the lobby. We walked to Pancake Pantry and ate an obscene amount of pancakes. The rest of the day consisted of roaming through antique stores with Danielle and David, becoming entirely too overcaffeinated at Frothy Monkey, speed-walking around the block to blow off some energy, and desperately trying to find the motivation to finish a paper that was due Sunday morning. We decided that baking cookies would be a good study break. Three hours later, the entire kitchen and every person in it were thoroughly coated with flour, and the cookies still weren't done. I may have started the flour war, but I definitely ended up on the losing end. It was quite possibly the most fun I've ever had while baking. We made dozens of reindeer, a sleigh, Santa, his bag of goodies, and three baby reindeer that I named Cocoa, Mocha, and Yum. After all of that excitement, I stayed up half of the night working on my paper and ended up oversleeping Sunday and missing church. Later that afternoon, we went to some friends' house to watch football and further ignore all homework.
In short, I had fun this weekend. I enjoyed myself. I relaxed, and I got a decent amount of sleep, and I laughed so much I thought my gut would split. I did what birthdays are supposed to be about-- I celebrated life. And I did it in the company of people who have come to mean the world to me. I simply cannot think of a better way to usher in another year of such a precious gift.
Much love to you all.
No comments:
Post a Comment