Le Weekend

Friday

We were to meet The Bus and Co. for her pre-birthday bash at Patterson Bowling downtown. We arrived and Earthdragon and Damnyeller were present with many of their cohorts, but no Bus and Co.--she'd fallen ill at dinner and gone home. Here's hoping her bug was of the 24-hour variety, and that all will be well soon. We bowled two games of duckpins--which I loathe--but had fun nonetheless, and got to shoot the shit with folks we hadn't seen in a while. I also got my first duckpin spares and my first ever duckpin strike. Mmmmm, satisfying!

Saturday

The Burkleigh Square Community Association's annual fundraising dinner. Cha, VP of the Comm. Ass., very busy all day--and on top of her hecticity she was off to some fair trade warehouse in western MD for a big sale in the am, bringing home: a buttload of handcrafted musical instruments (singing bowls, thumb drumbs, gourd shakers, flutes, cymbals, didgeridoos), kites, batik cloths, silk lanterns, African dolls, chocolates, various items requisite for the implementation of voodoo curses, a freezedried coelacanth mummy, six of the seven daggers of Medigo, a series of Dogon tribal masks of frog people from the dark twin of the star Sirius, a monkey's cloven hoof that grants ironic wishes, a napkin scrawled with a portrait of Cocteau and signed Pab. Pic., a hermetic key to Poussin's Bergers d'Arcadie, George Washington's masonic apron, and a coffee cake from Starbucks which was most assuredly not fair trade in origin. I played with many of these toys for much of the afternoon. At one point I had four singing bowls singing at once--this caused my fillings to ache and our bird devolved into a reptilian, underwent several distinct metamorphoses, announced a certain ennui based in its opinion of canary seeds, and slept.

At the fundraiser we were fortunate enough to have friends: The Traveling Joneses showed and were kind enough to endure the woeful caterwauling of local karaoke-ers (not to mention the foamy beer and cheap red wine). They look well and we got to catch up a bit but they couldn't alas, hang out after due to a run of strep fever; Sam, a wise old soul in a young, tiny body, was feverish and asleep but talking with his eyes open the night before, saying "I'm broken, I want to go home to my room," which alarmed his parents a bit considering they were in his room in his home at the time. It's Australian for Beer!--who can sing, thankfully--showed, as did Seoul Shiksa and Virginia Monologues--who can't, alas; I was compelled to bust out my best Freddie Mercury channeling Elvis on "Crazy Little Thing Called Love," before dying while accompanying Virginia Monologues at "Eye of the Tiger." The eggplant parmesian was killer! AND, to top it all off, I think the Comm. Ass. made some money.

I talked to the Traveling Joneses for a while about traveling, and wonder will we wander together again some day?