more birthday rambling

Ok. So today I woke up because maintenance people were coming in. I mentioned that already, so that's all I'll say about it. When I was walking to campus I passed by Union Grill and saw sk4p, cyano, lrstrobel and fiannaharpar there and they all wished me a happy birthday. I also ran into my friend Dave at the corner and he also wished me a happy birthday. I ran into other people on the street. I'm getting confused. I went to the lounge and played some bridge with Nick, babailey, and Drew, and rjmccall, and combinator and Kirstin and all. I hung out on campus for quite a bit. Nick and I walked to the UC to get pretzels at some point and hung out talking to Clinton outside and I don't remember the afternoon much but around 4:30 I went home.

I walked home along Craig, filing my unemployment claim for this week on my cellphone (I got a real kick out of that) and I ran into Fred and Jameel, who also got a kick out of it. Noble and Jen walked by as well like "What should we get you for your birthday?" I was like "Hmm, Phantom is over there.." "Yes, but what don't you have yet?" "I don't have the Starfarers 5-6 expansion yet..."

For the record I had two conversations in the lounge that went something like:

frosh/soph lounge rat: Hey, I hear it is your birthday today.
me: Yeah! whee!
them: how old are you?
me: Good question. How old do you think I am?
them: I dunno. 21? 22?
me: *giggles* you are too nice.

At dinner Gareth thought I'm turning 21. :)

Anyway, so for a 25th birthday it was pretty good. I went to the Church Brew Works for dinner and they literally reserved like an entire quarter of the restaurant for me, like the whole pub side beyond the bar and the first few tables. It was cool. I got to see a lot of my friends. I got to see jacquez, nlanza, Norm, rmitz, Alex, Kevin W, Benoit, Aiton, Rebecca, Bayani, Pat, Paul, Mary, puuj, alibash, Christina, Adam, Noble, Jen, Drew, combinator, jcreed, Fwiffo, Kirstin, Dan, Charlie, Evan, ralphmelton, mrpeck, Chris Lee, George, Eric, bn29, Arvonn, Scott L, Rachel, cdwfs, naufiel, alternakittyn, Django, Konstantin, Gareth, blk, mj2q, Justin and David, buoren, dvarin, eub, and Tommy Tarka! (I hadn't seen Tommy in years but he was driving through town to go back to Delaware and George got him to come to the party for a bit which was really cool! Tommy is awesome and knows more people than I do, which should scare most of you) I think that's everyone although my memory might be fuzzy and if so I suck. Oh, I got to drive to the CBW with Eli, too. It was funny, there was traffic on the Bloomfield bridge so I was stuck there for a bit and Kevin Shiue called me to tell me he'd be coming to the party and I was like "Ack! I'm driving and talking on a cellphone! HOW WEIRD!" except that I wasn't really driving per se since we were stuck. Anyway, I bounced around talking to lots and lots of people and it was way cool to see everyone. I got some cards and a few gifts, namely the Starfarers expansion from Noble and Jen and a book of cat stories from Mike and cards from the Placeways and from Janie and Cort and from Arvonn and Christina drew me a "Deanna Has a Birthday" card/comic. Whee! I shared some pierogie pizza with Kevin and Carl and I had a beer sampler and that's all I had - well, the CBW gave me a free dessert, and Carl and Kirstin conspired so it was a piece of triple chocolate cake with four candles on top and everyone sang happy birthday to me and it was fun. The cake was really good. At one point Justin (the jensen's almost-4-year-old) was staring at it and so I fed him a forkful of it like "Don't tell your mommy, okay?" Kirstin also had some of the cake since she picked it out and I was too hyper to eat much anyway. Anyway, it was still good to see people I've known for 8 years as well as people I've only known for a few months. It's the few-months ones that are actually pretty neat mostly because it reminds me that each year I meet more and more cool people.

Afterwards I saw Spider-man with Kevin, Carl, Kevin, Scott, Martin, Jason, Christina, Adam, Bryan, Mike, Janie, Cort, Fwiffo, Mark, Charlie, and Alex. I liked it, for a comic-book movie, although it had its moments of needing better dialogue. The effects were great and I thought most of the acting was pretty good, especially on the part of Tobey Maguire (for obvious reasons). (For the record, he's been one of my favourite "nerdy" cute actors since Pleasantville four years ago, so I'm not going to bother gushing over how cute I think he is. But, he's right up there with John Cusack in my book.) And it is neat that Flash was played by a guy from my graduating class at CMU (who I didn't know personally, but many people in Films@CMU have said he's an awful lot like his character in Spider-man).

So, it was a good birthday and it wouldn't have been nearly as good without all of my most excellent friends. Thanks!

Oh, also, I'm going to be in Philly from May 21-27.