I was able to take Thursday off to get a few things done.

(1) I tried to get tickets to Leonard Cohen, and was unsuccessful.

(2) I was supposed to get a parcel from UPS, but they never showed up. I just learned there was something wrong at their end so they'll be making their last delivery attempt today. I guess that means I'm making a UPS run tomorrow morning. Have I mentioned that I really, really prefer to get my mail in the mail?

(3) I was also planning to bake chocolate chip cookies for Evan's birthday party at Tribeca that night and, thank God, managed to pull that off without screwing it up. I use the recipe from the Crisco package, except that instead of measuring the chocolate chips I just dump in the entire bag. It's amazing how that extra shot of chocolate cheers things up.

( More on this and other birthday parties behind the cut. )

The third set actually ended a few minutes early, which is unheard-of and may have had something to do with the increasingly rowdy enthusiasm of the audience. Or possibly it was time to make another run at the birthday cake. At any rate, it looked like everyone relevant was having a pretty happy birthday.

It being Good Friday by this time, I figured it was time to go home and lie low for a while, because the weekend wasn't over yet!

Why? Because of this version of "Who Do You Love" (from The Last Waltz):


If it weren't for Ronnie, I would only know one song that references the age I woke up this morning, and I think you know what that song is. In case you don't, here is a particularly disturbing version of it:



Jesus. Here's Ronnie again, just to cleanse the palate:



And happy birthday to me!

So, the party last night.

The cake turned out, and so did the frosting. I got a snazzy new cake stand and this is what it looked like:

( Pictures of my handiwork! )

There were about ten guests, which is an ideal number to eat a birthday cake: everybody got a fair-sized slice, with or without ice cream, and I ended up with a couple of pieces left for later, but not enough to make a real pig of myself.

( Leftovers. )

Since this was also a film club gathering (with some extra guests) we also viewed movies. thallid and deceptivelyevil arrived first and cast their vote, and this meant the first movie we watched was Reefer Madness, cleverly colourized from the 1938 (or possibly 1936?) original cautionary tale. We quickly realized the colouring had been done by affectionate potheads, because the marijuana smoke was every colour from green to purple to pink.

( Coneycat rants about anti-pot propaganga for a minute. )

The movie? Was brilliant, for a given value of "brilliant" that encompasses "bad acting, worse writing, and really, really funny dancing." These were the most energetic potheads you have ever seen. The writers of the movie seemed fatally confused as to the respective effects of, say, pot, peyote, and methamphetamines, and the kids in the movie kept acting like speed freaks. And then there was the FBI agent with the file cabinet full of "marihuana" cases. Agent: "We used to have about a file a year. Now--do you see those cabinets?" Random party guest: "The one on the left is devoted to Jerry Garcia!" Agent: "There are many sad cases. This one is especially tragic: a young boy who, under the effects of marihuana, killed his entire family with an axe." Random party guest: "That'll teach them to stand in front of the Cheetos!"

We learned a lot from the film. Mostly how not to write a screenplay. The first few scenes wouldn't play, but even so it felt like much longer than an hour.

And then, in order to get the full spectrum of the drug experience, we watched Festival Express. Again. It never gets old. I seem to have developed a pattern of showing two movies when I host this group, one to laugh at and one to watch. Which appears to work, judging by the reaction of the guests.

Or maybe they were in a cake-induced state of euphoria.

The "not a birthday party" message didn't seem to get across, and I was a little embarrassed at the percentage of attendees who gave me presents. Not that I plan to give them back. latsyrk, who is a genius, made this little darling:

( Let's call him Socks! No, wait, that's what I call my socks... )

And then, as people began to drift away, a few of us watched part of The Last Waltz for the Neil Young content and we called it a night.

I should definitely do this again next year.

I think progress has been made on a couple of big-project fronts, but I'm still pretty relieved the only major activities on my schedule this weekend involve getting ready for the party.

I need to get to the barn and do laundry at some point as well.

Damn. One of these days work and the weather will be sane at the same time. In the meantime... cake!

Inspired by the last couple of birthday parties I've attended, I'm sort of throwing myself one this weekend.

Okay, it's not really a birthday party.

It's a "help me eat my cake" party. Because I like to bake and my birthday has become my excuse to do so. Only... well, then I have a cake, right?

I need to get a cake stand so I can do the thing properly. I found a recipe for home made butter cream frosting last year that frees me from pre-made icing which just is never as good.

And the same folks who came to the other parties, for the most part, are coming to this one. So barring catastrophe, this should be fun!

The party last night was great fun. I played two games of pool against thallid, who is very good. The first one I never got untracked and the game ended without me sinking a single ball. Despite the fact he was doing his best to not slaughter me.

The last time I played (last week at the other party) I did notice that after I'd spent some time being inept I got warmed up a bit and started actually making contact and then the balls started to fall. (My opponent in that game was as bad as I was, and since we ended up moving from front tables to a room, we actually called our game a draw and were happy.) Anyway, the second game I suddenly began to make contact and (thallid again not exactly playing for blood) I actually won that game. First time ever.

I will say, this group of people is much more fun to play with than the last folks I did, many years ago. It's amazing how much better you play when nobody is making fun of your inability to do so.

Also, I won a great stuffed fish out of the claw machine. Which is set up so that you can keep trying until you win something, but even so, I was pleased with myself for actually getting the prize I was aiming for.

As I mentioned in the Gloryhound post, thallid is celebrating his birthday today. (How old is he? Younger than me, I'll tell you!)

So a gang of us are getting together at a restaurant and then we're going to play pool. Which is how we celebrating another film clubber's birthday last week.

At this rate, I will start to not suck at the game!

My oldest niece is having a birthday this weekend. Because I am a bonehead, I couldn't think of exactly the right gift for her until it was too late to get it to her on time.

However, because I am awesome, I finally realized that the ideal gift for a kid with a thing about the Pirates of the Caribbean movies is: the 12-inch Captain Jack Sparrow action figure so realistic you feel like you should hide the rum 'n' raisin ice cream!

It went in the mail a minute ago, and if Canada Post does its part she should have it very shortly after her birthday. I only hope nobody else has had the same brainwave I have.

Mind you, as sagitare pointed out to me, if she gets more than one she can re-enact the hallucination scenes. So it's a win all the way around!

--y'all realize that after pulling this off, my brother is now the hero of my entire workplace, right? (Although it's probably just as well my boss is a musician with a sense of humour!)

There doesn't seem to be much point my captioning these. I mean, what could I say?

...whether my brother, who is much younger than I am and who I suspect my sister and other brother and I extensively picked on, ever harboured the urge for revenge.

I think I have my answer.

My birthday was re-celebrated a minute ago. In the library.

There was an Elvis impersonator.

Yeah, he hates me. But not in a bad way.

(Don't worry, there will be pictures. I suspect they'll be posted all over the campus, but I'm sure I'll be able to find one or two to post here...)

(Also, God bless the students who are in here working over reading week. They were very patient.)

Good news: I woke up this morning and everything still appears to work. So despite the way old age is creeping up on me... at least it isn't running.

Last night I planned to stay home and bake a cake--because at my age the one thing I feel a birthday must have is chocolate cake, and I have a recipe--but Jeff and Tammy were going downtown to the Cape Breton music showcase at the Lord Nelson Hotel, so I went along with them. We caught part of Matt Minglewood's set, were present for Ashley MacIsaac's, which ended with him and his boyfriend getting married onstage--I love weddings--and then managed to get into the main room (which was wall-to-wall Capers) for J.P. Cormier. He was great, and also very large. I mean, I knew he was a big guy, but I had no idea he was so tall. If you cloned Matt Mays and squished him all together he still wouldn't be as big as J.P.

We left at around two, when the Tom Fun Orchestra was onstage--think if Tom Waits joined Broken Social Scene and they brought a fiddle and an accordion into the band. They were good, but we were exhausted. Especially me, for I am very old.

On the way outside Rex Goudie from Canadian Idol held the door for the old folks (he's way tiny) and Jeff complained that Carmen Townsend was from Cape Breton so why wasn't she in the showcase? And where is her CD? And when is she coming back to Halifax?

I foresee more nights out with this group.

Anyway, all that's left is the awards show tonight, when I plan to eat cake and cheer for Joel, who will probably win several awards for my birthday (because it's all about ME) and also for In-Flight Safety to apologize for possibly giving their lead singer a scare on Saturday morning. The parking lot at the Marquee was really icy, and as Jeff and Tammy and I made our March of the Penguins way back to the car we nearly wiped out several times and did not notice we were about to slide out in front of a small SUV whose driver was trying to back up to the door of the Marquee. He rolled down his window to call "Excuse me!" and it was the In-Flight Safety guy, who probably didn't want to end his evening by squashing several paying customers. So we let him do his thing before we skated on over to Silver. Sorry!

Anyway, I need to get back and start baking. Cheers!

... but my coworkers rock.

I went off for coffee with my office-mate this morning and when we came back I was asked to check on something up in administration. Up I went--

--and there was a birthday cake. And cards, and all that good stuff.

Apparently this has been in the works for quite some time and the planners were desperately annoyed that I wouldn't leave the office this morning (I had to meet some people for reference help) because they wanted to decorate the office. They figured since I was showing no signs of minding my incipient forty-ness, we might as well have cake.

I love these people.

I feel like Gollum saying this, but it is in fact my birthday. My brother (the one I live with) revealed his masterful knowledge of my personality by giving me two CDs--the Some Kind Of Monster EP-with-live-stuff by Metallica, and the new Ian Tyson CD, Songs From the Gravel Road. I think I'll keep him.

How old am I? Decode the subject line to find out.