Fantastic birthday weekend

[kumir_k9]

This weekend was try2catch32 's birthday and for her birthday she wanted to spend time with friends from New England.  So burkefireguy11 , with the help of myself and rowan_syngwyn  and gianajho   made plans for her to do things with her friends all weekend.

Of course, no great plan can start out with some form of drama and this weekend was absolutely no exception.  The plan went like this: They would both fly up to Boston and I would pick them up and drive them around to things, a nice simple plan really. 

Then it expanded to have bukefireguy (let's just refer to him as bfg for now) drive up Thursday night and he and I would drive together from CT to pick up try2catch32 (let's just refer to her as t2c for now) at Logan Friday afternoon.  Marginally more complex, but still pretty simple.

Then bfg couldn't get off work Thursday night so was going to drive up starting early Friday morning and we'd still pick up the plan from that point with a slight more exhausted bfg.  However, he didn't get off in a timely fashion due to various issues and thus hit DC morning traffice and due to various other traffic related incidents, he was running a lot behind schedule.

So I'm sitting in the Park and Ride lot talking to him on his cell phone lone after he should have been there and he was still quite a distance away.  I'm looking at the schedule and thinking, "Oh shit <no really, that's what I was thinking>, there's no way that if I wait for him to get here that we'll pick t2c up on time."  To make matters worse, due to Murphy's Law, she also had no cell phone, so I couldn't even get in touch with her to tell her no one would be there to pick her up on time.

So I offered bfg for me to leave and go pick t2c up and meet him someplace else.  It would have meant two cars instead of one, but she at least wouldn't be left wandering around Logan wondering what was going on, especially since bfg was driving on almost no sleep in a couple of days after driving many hours alone.  However, he didn't feel he could drive much longer.  What to do?

Then I remembered that jjmarika  (let's just call her JJ for now)  might be available to help me out.  So I called JJ and begged and pleaded and offered her a free dinner if she would go pick up t2c from the Jet Blue 3:00 fligth and bring her to Rowan's place.  For the sake of ease of this novel, I'm going to refer to Erin as Rowan and to Erin as Sasha.  If you're going, "Huh?" then you don't know them and it won't matter.  If you do know them, you'll go, "Thank you Rick". 

I'm feeling pretty good about this until JJ looks online and asks me whether I mean the 2:00 flight or the 3:30 flight.  I'm positive that bfg told me the 3:00 flight, but this is not an option.  Suddenly I'm thinking that having asked, "What else can go wrong?" wasn't such a good idea.  I called bfg back and asked him which of the two flights t2c was on.  WORSE!  Gentle readers, never ask, "What else can go wrong?".  Fate will show you.  She was scheduled to come in at 2:00 and suddenly JJ's hour and a half to get to Boston turns into 20 minutes and I have no way to tell this to t2c.

Well fortunately, to make a short story long, JJ was a real sport and all turned out well and t2c was really happy to see a face at the airport she didn't expect to see and JJ got to join us for socialization and dinner and life was good and all it "cost" me was dinner for my best friend and having her join us for a few hours.  :-)

Friday night we sat around and talked about lots of things, especially LARPing (yeah, I know, the shock) and then went out to a local restaurant, followed by more socialization at Rowan and vyseryn 's place with a showing of most of Star Wars (the original first episode, or episode VI, the one with Luke, Leah and Hans) because the birthday girl had never seen it.  We gave up and went to bed exhausted before they blew up the Death Star.  Uh, I hope I'm not spoling the end there for anyone.  ;-)

Saturday morning, bfg and I went out for coffee and our hosts made strawberry french toast for us.  We spent time sitting out on the porch talking and watching all the wildlife (finches and swallows and nuthatches and squirrels and chipmunks, etc).  It was really lovely. 

Rown took the three of us out to visit a couple of shops bfg and I really wanted to visit.  He was hoping for some reasonably priced used hockey equipment and we had passed a sports shop on the way in Friday.  And near to that was a very large Halloween store and... well, need I say more?   >:-}  We followed it up with a fine, brick oven pizza lunch because the t2c really likes pizza, but then again, who doesn't?  BTW, the diet was blown completely to Hell this weekend, just in case that hasn't been obvious so far.

Saturday afternoon we headed out to a local winery and did wine tasting and then sat on the porch for an hour and a half or so drinking different local wines.  Ok, bfg, t2c and rowan sipped lots of wines. Vyseryn and I were the designated drivers and I don't drink anyway, as most of you know.  I picked up a couple bottles of wine and a spicy salsa there as presents for Monique.  I also got this marvelous wine bottle sleeve.  It was a sky blue with sparkly silver swirls on it.  Guess where some of you are going to be seeing that.  :-)

We headed down to Natuck to meet up with grumblykins , Sasha, klee39 , Daryl (who probably has an LJ but I don't know what it is), and lawbard  for dinner.  What a marvelous evening.  The highlight for me was definitely lawbard's telling of the time the Reaper made Trelaine paint the Pharoah's pyramid, told with his own unique flair.  It was not only very accurate, but hysterical.  My side hurt from laughing and I had tears I was laughing so hard.  His Marlon Brando impersonation of the Reaper was the best.  Good food, good company.

From there we went down to grumblykins and Sasha's for fresh baked chocolate chip cookies and more socialization and an impromptu recorder lesson for klee39.  Alas, the evening came to an end far too early and we headed back to Rowan's.  I should note that we had a spacious and extremely comfortable visiting artist's apartment all to ourselves and it was just marvelous.  It was the perfect way to spend the nights as we all had our own space and a separate shower.  It was almost like staying in separate housing; in fact it *was* separate housing.

Sunday morning bfg and I went out and bought bagels and muffins at a place that our hosts recommended.  They had Snicker's coffee.  OMG, it was like having dessert for breakfast.  I have a new love in my love.  We decided we were going to go hike the old Madrigal site and of course, because Madrigal came up, it rained.  We decided to do it anyway and stopped for umbrellas, figuring that spending money on it would cause the rain to stop.  No such luck, but it was a beautiful hike anyway and it brought back wonderful memories.  Ah, I miss the old scary bathrooms and the horrible, little, tumble down monster camp... uh, no, that's not it.  I miss all the good things about that camp and those were many.  It was neat to hike the Darkest Road route.  Now I understand why people hold that fight so fondly in their memories.  Just incredible to imagine.  We ended our weekend with Rowan at the Chili's for lunch.

From there, bfg, t2c and I headed to my place in CT.  We had Chinese food with Monique and then I sent them on their way with coffee.  I understand they didn't get home until 4 am this morning.  :-(  I guess the weekend had to have bookend travel woe to maintain the symmetry.

On unrelated notes, I went up to sans_peur 's place last night to take care of her kitties.  On the way up there in the pouring rain on back roads, I hear this loud "bang" and the car lurches sideways.  It felt like something had run into the side of the car.  When I stopped to check it out, the passenger side rear view mirror was gone, just totally gone, but there wasn't a scratch anywhere else on the car.  Weird.  I can only guess that something large must have clipped the vehicle, maybe a deer or something.  I don't know, I never saw a thing.

Oh, and belated Happy Birthday to outlawblade .  He shares a birthday with t2c  I was celebrating his birthday all weekend too.  He just didn't know it.  :-)

Comments

[swashbucklr]

The hook that was hanging off of the rear-view mirror must have caught on something. ;)

[pbsweetheart.livejournal.com]

Well goodness! Sounds like you had one heck of a weekend! Sorry to hear about the incident at the end though. It must have been a deer. That's so strange.

Hopefully I'll get to see the wine bottle sleeve. :)

[kumir-k9.livejournal.com]

Holy crap! Someone actually reads all that blather? You must be seriously bored. ;-)

[pbsweetheart.livejournal.com]

A teensy bit bored, but more interested. You always have some good stories. :)

[tashewolf.livejournal.com]

Goof, of course we read. :)

[jjmarika.livejournal.com]

Well fortunately, to make a short story long, JJ was a real sport and all turned out well and t2c was really happy to see a face at the airport she didn't expect to see and JJ got to join us for socialization and dinner and life was good and all it "cost" me was dinner for my best friend and having her join us for a few hours. :-)

Was not a problem at all. I was thrilled to get to see people, had a ton of fun, and still got my resting in on Saturday and Sunday.

And thanks for dinner.

[sensicalsmile.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a great weekend spent with great people, small logistical hiccups aside. :) Fun fun!

[klee39.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the impromptu recorder lesson! Its always fun to talk about and make music with you. Unfortunately, my cat managed to spill water all over Rowan's music book she let me borrow *facepalm* so now I owe her a new one. I manged to salvage this one so its perfectly usable but I always make a point to return things in as close to the same condition as I got them. Water stained and wrinkled is not acceptable.

It was great to just sit and chat with you at dinner as well. Its been too long since we've had a chance to do that.

[kumir-k9.livejournal.com]

I have to drop Monique off Sunday afternoon at 4:30 at the Hartford airport. Any chance you'd be interested in dinner after that, maybe in the Sturbridge area? I wouldn't mind driving the rest of the way there if you're available.

Eh, it's not all that much farther to your place. I could even pick up something and bring it in if that works better.

[klee39.livejournal.com]

sorry, but I have plans for sunday already. soon though, for sure *hugs*

[kumir-k9.livejournal.com]

Just as well. I think I may end up going to Eagle Pass and helping out on some 7V reorganizing. It looks like it will go beyond that time frame.