Best day ever?

Many years ago, I lived in a group house (no, not a "group home", those are for ex-felons) in Mt. Pleasant. One day Jack and I got up and decided it was time for "Best Day Ever!" and started our way to an amazing day. While the day has since been surpassed by getting married, the insane day when we painted the house and re-did the front yard, and several other things, it was pretty spectacular. To give you an idea, here's a partial list of what happened:

1. We wrote a letter to Old English, asking them to bring back the 64-ounce bottles. Jack even drew pictures of us in the letter. Unfortunately, we never got around to mailing it and hopefully someone threw it away at some point.
2. Sunday, Bloody Mary Sunday! The whole house went to the Marx Cafe for brunch and Bloody Mary's.
3. Daytona 500! No telling who won (I guess this was 2002, so we could probably figure that out), but we had a great time cheering on Jeremy Mayfield. At some point, Nora's parents came by, which was a little weird.
4. Nap time!
5. Happy birthday, Greg! Housemate Greg had a birthday party that night, so of course we invited lots of folks over.
6. [redacted]!
7. Dancing! Greg DJ'ed his own party, leading to much dancing and good times.

Luckily, we didn't have to go to work the next day because of some sort of holiday, so we stayed up 'til all sorts of hours. Every now and then I get a text from Jack wishing me a happy anniversary of Best Day Ever! (Jack also has a blog, although I'm not really sure what it's about. There are some pictures of him getting ready for a job interview, if you follow the link on the right.)

Party from a year ago

Katherine and I have hosted a weekend-after-Labor-Day party for the last few years. Last year's was probably the best, if only for having half-smokes.

Let's see, some keys to a good September backyard party:
keg of Pilsner Urquell - check
spicy all-beef half-smokes on the grill - check
sitting at the picnic table talking about the Redskins - check
We Are Scientists on the iPod - check
our neighbor Ian drinking a whole bottle of lemonade - check
out-of-town guests - check
MBA students - missed that one

I can't really think of anything that would've improved last year's party, except for having more people there. So, this year we'll be making a special effort to get a huge amount of MBA classmates to the party. (Note to MBA students: the NPV of this party is infinite!)

26th birthday revisited!

Today we're celebrating Brucetravis's birthday with a trip out to the country. We'll visit Copper Fox Distillery in Sperryville, VA, for a little private tour and then we're heading to Front Royal to tube down the Shenandoah River (made famous with the line "Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River..." in John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads"). Should be an insane time.

It's not unlike my 26th birthday, when Katherine and I made a similar trip. We drove out to Sperryville and checked out the now-closed Cooter's Garage, a wild tourist trap of Dukes of Hazzard memorabilia. In the age of Urban Outfitters and ironic t-shirts and kidults, I was glad to see some shirts with honest-to-goshness Confederate flags on the roof of the General Lee. Then we drove up the mountains and headed along Skyline Drive for a few miles, checking out the Shenandoah Valley scenery. Dropping down into Front Royal at the end of the Shenandoah National Park, it was off to Markham (I think) to pick some apples. Very nice, although September 27th tends to be a little late in the season around here.

Why doesn't everyone go to the country for their birthday?!

My 24th birthday!

September 27th, 2002. This was a weird birthday.

I was training for the Marine Corps Marathon at the time, so I ran about 22 miles in the morning, then came home and ate a whole watermelon on the front porch. At some point, various people came over to the house for an afternoon party, although I'm not really sure who was involved. Justin Jarboe was definitely there, because I know he had pictures of me hitting a pinata.

This was my "beard" phase, so I have a red, scraggly beard in the pictures. Delightful.

All in all, it was a pretty good day, and as low-key as you can get and still have a pinata. I guess it's just one of those parties that you forget about over the years.

A great recent 30th birthday party

My friend Adam and a few other folks all turned 30 about the same time earlier this summer. Naturally, they threw a group party and it was a tremendous success!

Group parties can be tough things. Will the different groups of friends mingle, or will everyone stand around in separate circles? Will some people get lots of presents and others get none? Will one person's friends be lots better at pitching horseshoes?

Typically, horseshoe-pitching skills wouldn't matter too much, but Adam's neighbor has ingeniously installed a horseshoe pit in their backyard! Granted, there's no above-ground pool to go with it, but these are the sorts of things that make for a great party. Sure, anyone can have music and beer, but horseshoes take it to a whole other level. Oh, Adam and his friends also smoked a pig. That's not chips and salsa, folks, that's a whole pig!

I'm not even going to try to top Adam's party, but he has set the standard. Will a stand-up comedian measure up to a smoked pig? Will the go-go iPod mix measure up to horseshoes? Does having a blog add anything whatsoever to a party? Will it make my party better or worse if I spend all night crying? We'll see.

Preview of someone else's birthday!

Good friend and classmate Sam is having a birthday happy hour this evening. I don't know how old he's going to be, but I think he's a little older than me. Why? Because the last time we played golf I had to keep goading him into swinging harder and using a bigger club. I even called him a pansy a few times for not hitting the ball as far as he could. In a miraculous demonstration of courage that revealed his true age to be no less than 50, he didn't respond to my taunts and kept plugging along, dinking up and down the course. I hope I don't stop heckling people when I turn 30.

So, how will Sam be celebrating his 51st birthday? With a happy hour at Skye Lounge! I've never been to Skye, but it is a "lounge", which makes me a little apprehensive. I don't have any clothes to wear to a lounge. For instance, I'm wearing a new H&M t-shirt every day this week (just $5.90 each during the sales tax holiday!), but the Washington Post review of Skye says that most of the clientele are wearing suits. Hmmm...

To his credit, Sam did try to have this party at Pizzeria Paradiso, but decided it was too small. I like this thinking: boldly assuming you're going to have way too many people for a regular bar is great! And, his wife's e-mail also said they decided on Skye because it has outdoor seating and great happy hour specials, both of which are excellent decision factors. Finally, it's Metro-accessible. Great choice!

Frankly, I'm just glad it's not at the Tombs.

Happy birthday, Sam!

Great reactions to my age at a house party!

My good friend and classmate Paul invited us to a house party on Swann Street on Saturday night. Being a huge fan of house parties, he didn't have to do much convincing to get us to go.

It turns out the party was in a house Paul lived in way back in the late '90's. It's been a group house ever since, but the owner finally decided to kick everyone out, fix it up, and charge market rates for the property. Punk rock is dead on Swann Street. I guess I'm surprised it actually lasted this long.

(By the way, is Swann Street where that married man got murdered while having an illicit tryst with two gay gentlemen a few years back?)

Oh, so the party was pretty fun. They had an astounding SIX kegs! Not a chance of getting through those. They also had some very dusty bottles of madeira and some type of Greek licorice liqueur that were pretty foul.

The best, though, was running into my friend Carrie who I hadn't seen in years. I told her I needed our mutual friend's e-mail address so I could invite her to my 30th birthday party, at which point Carrie actually shot beer up her nose and all over the place, while exclaiming, "You're not thirty yet?!" It was awesome.

Someone else heard I was turning 30 and fantastically deadpanned, "I don't think you'll have a very big adjustment to make." I don't really know what he meant, but I appreciated it.

More melancholy birthday recollections...

Oddly, I don't really recall many birthdays from the elementary school era. I have vague recollections of going to a high school football game, and I've certainly heard plenty of stories about the time I had cheesecake for my birthday cake and no one else would eat it, but that's about it. I guess I'm now forced to face the harsh truth that it's hard to remember stuff that happened 20 to 25 years ago. (This will probably work in my favor when I no longer remember high school when I'm 45. That day can't come soon enough.)

I do remember one birthday where my mom had a big piece of butcher paper (did other people have butcher paper around the house?) on the table and told all the guests to write something on it. The premise was that I wasn't supposed to see what they wrote, but would then be allowed to look at it when I turned 16. This had several faults, including:
1. Could my hillbilly friends actually write anything? And would I ever learn to read?
2. Wouldn't I have been too embarassed to actually talk to my parents when I as 16?
3. Where, exactly, was this piece of paper going to stay for the next 8 to ten years?

Needless to say, I never saw this paper again. I suspect there were lots of drawings of race cars, but I can't say for sure. So, if John Owens, Blair Williams, Brett Gayer, Leon Spears, or anyone else remembers this party, please leave a comment about what you wrote. If you wrote something dumb, feel free to change it to be funny.

Reminiscing about my 25th birthday

Well, my 30th (on September 27th!!!) should be a pretty inspired birthday, but can it top my 25th?

For my 25th, I requested that all attendees wear t-shirts with my name on them. It was pretty high concept (well, for a 25 year old) and appropriately narcissistic. Not everyone made a shirt, but enough people did to prove that the concept worked.

Instead of having people bring gifts, Patrick arranged for everyone to write complaint/compliment letters to the manufacturers of various products that I enjoy. Then, over the course of the next few months, I got the following personalized letters:
1. a weird thank you note from Andre champagne (the "letterhead" was a cutout of the Andre label taped onto plain white paper)
2. a letter from Tony Kornheiser saying that, yes, his name should be pronouned "Korn-heezer, as in 'geezer'" (why, oh why, didn't I frame this?)
3. a postcard from Jonathan Franzen apologizing for all the typos in my copy of the Corrections...and a paperback "corrected" version...from New Zealand!
4. some random coupons for Glad products

For drinks, I bought a case of Andre champagne. I think that we had something like 20 people in my one-bedroom basement apartment and went through just under 20 bottles of the stuff.

Finally, after finishing up at my place, everyone piled in two cabs and went to Hooters for wings and Miller Lite. Somewhere around my house I've got pictures of me with our waitress. If I remember correctly, I'm wearing a tie. I don't know why.

This party is going to be tough to beat, but I'm thinking that a standup comic should push my 30th over the top. Of course, I'm always open to suggestions. Keep the comments coming!

28,000 for practice?!

Yesterday's Post had some good coverage of the 'Skins scrimmage game on Saturday out in Ashburn. You didn't go? Really? Well, 28,000 other people did! That's right: 28,000 people watched practice! I would make a lot of comments about how ridiculous this is, but it's probably just as well to let Allen Iverson speak my mind for me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGDBR2L5kzI.

If FedEx Field holds about 90,000 people, then this means that practice draws a third of the crowd for real events. Doing some quick calculations from other parties Katherine and I have thrown in recent years, we see that the real event (my 30th Birthday on September 27) figures to be pretty good.

Here are the practice parties with their attendance:
Labor Day 2006: 30 people
New Year's 2007: 20 people (many of them in tuxedoes)
Labor Day 2007: 35 people (and half-smokes)
New Year's 2008: 15 people
July 4th 2008: 10 people (not an ounce of planning went into this party)

Adding all these numbers up, then multiplying by 3, it looks like we can expect a crowd of at least 330, without adjusting for the weak dollar or the presence of a standup comedian. Don't miss it!