j-j-johnny and me

When I lived in Royal Oak, before my youngest brother was born, I went to preschool and kindergarten with A., who was my very best friend. We moved away when I was six, but A. and I kept in touch for a surprisingly long time - longer, I think, than we were actually in-person friends.

When I visited her for the last time, I must have been 13 or so. We didn't have a lot in common anymore - I remember watching Spaceballs and playing a lot of Sorry!. She played a tape for me ("She Don't Use Jelly") that I didn't really get into, and after that we didn't talk much anymore.

These days I realize she was a lot cooler than I was back then, all listening to the Flaming Lips and watching funny grown-up movies. I wonder what she did with herself after that.

yeah, some people want to steal her heart

Globe-trotting!

Everybody's friend Ryan returned from his time in Kazakhstan for the Peace Corps recently, and a commemorative party was held this weekend. I drove with T. and Bdon to Chicago, spent Friday night and Saturday morning gently chilling, and bought a very sexy new shirt before the real party began.

Swashbuckling!

After a round of vodka shots accompanied by a horse sausage chaser, the rowdiness of the party shot up precipitously. The guest of honor got it into his head to play a game of baseball. Lacking a bat and a ball, we were forced to use an umbrella and hamburger buns. Similarly, lacking space in Neal's backyard, a baseball contingent trekked to the boulevard part of Logan Boulevard. (This isn't as dangerous as it sounds - Logan is divided into three parts, not two: a four-lane, two-way center road with smaller one-way streets on each side. So the boulevard was at the side of the main road.) Since the hamburger buns smashed in midair whenever we hit them, there wasn't really a way to catch the ball or tag anyone out, and we pretty much had to tackle the runner once they hit the bun. The game quickly degenerated into some friendly grappling between Ryan and me, since he'd been asking me a bit about bjj earlier. Bystanders helpfully removed our glasses, both Ryan's shoes and one of mine. (Maybe they were afraid we'd kick each other?) Not long after that, we returned to the main party at Neal's place, me with one dirty sock and one clean sock, Ryan with grass prints all over himself.

Romance!

Back at Neal's place, the fact that J. and T. (who dated each other a long time ago) had each brought a relatively new significant other led to some entertaining storytelling. Everyone had an embarrassing story from J. or T.'s younger, less dignified days. I don't know if J. and T. enjoyed it, but everyone else had a great time. J. and T. sure did a lot of cutely dumb things back in the day.

Adventure!

Everyone at the party liked my new shirt, and it was generally agreed that I can do a little bit of style. So Ryan asked me to go shopping with him Sunday with the goal of helping him become more dashing. Shirts were found without too much trouble, and then we passed Myopic Books, where I picked up One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. The whole outing was a good time, punctuated by us periodically getting slightly lost. That was fine, though - it just led to extra car time listening to some great albums I hadn't heard in a while. On the way to drop Ryan back off at Jake's place, we passed a coffee house that looked delicious even from the outside - after a hot afternoon of walking around, lemonade was impossible to pass up. I had intended to go home after that, but the J Team and T. wanted to have dinner in Chinatown and I was forced to change my mind. Another slightly-lost episode and a theory about Built to Spill later, we were having bubble tea and waiting for a table with them. Dinner was at Lao Si Chuan, apparently widely known as one of the better Chinese places in town. Delicious! Everyone went to Jake's place for a little while, and then I had a long and exhausting drive home.