Friday evening, Matt decided that it had been too long since we'd seen Chuck and Anita, so we called them and arranged to meet them for dinner. We wound up over at IHOP, where the service was even slower than usual due to a party of about thirty college students.
Heidi - their sprout - is growing fast, and both Chuck and Anita seem to enjoy parenthood. They're already planning for a second. Chuck, as might be expected, is enjoying the ability to buy silly toys and pretend they're for the baby. He had with him a plush ant which, when you squeezed its abdomen, squeaked. He was much more enamored of it than Heidi. Heidi was fascinated with Matt, actually. She couldn't stop looking at him.
At one point, a little boy of about four or so stood up to look across the booth dividers at Heidi. As soon as he realized we were looking at him, he sat back down again, and we teased Chuck that he was going to have to beat the boys off his daughter with a stick.
After dinner, we headed over to the Books-A-Million down the road. I finally gave in to a months-old desire and picked up all three of the Harry Potter books in hardback. Now, of course, I'm waiting impatiently for the fourth. I think it's due out in April.
Saturday, after running a few mundane errands and spending yet more money at Bath and Body Works (I should buy stock) we went to K.T. and Kevin's housewarming party.
It was a much smaller party than I'd been anticipating - all of Kevin's cronies who helped them move were at work, so it was just our usual band of whackos. That was all right; we spent the vast majority of the party in the kitchen munching and drinking.
Since Gateway had finally paid him the bonuses he's been due for about three months, they had a little extra money to burn, and since this extra windfall hit at about the same time as a sudden interest in mixed drinks, Kevin played bartender while we sampled his creations. (By the way, if you take some Edy's Girl Scout Cookie Thin Mint ice cream, and put it in a blender with some peppermint schnapps, some chocolate liqueur, and a little milk to keep it all mostly liquid, you end up with an extremely divine drink.)
K.T. got completely schnockered almost immediately. I think she was a little embarrassed about it, because she kept excusing herself by telling us that she'd had a stressful week. We finally got her convinced that at her own party, in her own apartment, she was entitled to get as drunk as she wanted on her own booze. After that, she sortof relaxed into being drunk-silly.
When the CD player started in on the Zoot Suit Riot CD, I wandered into the living room to dance, and everyone else decided that the seats were more comfortable in the living room anyway and trooped after me. In my own somewhat inebriated state, I got huffy with K.T. when she decided to change the CD player after the first song, and even more grumpy when she finally decided she wanted to hear the entire Wings' greatest hits CD. (I like Paul McCartney all right, but I don't like it enough to want to listen to an entire album of it at one go. Besides, when I'm drunk I can only dance to music I know well, and I'd never heard most of these songs.)
In a surprisingly tactful move, considering both our states, K.T. decided to put on her Dr. Demento album, starting with Frank Zappa's song, "Dancin' Fool." Whether this was a peace offering or an attempt to shut me up, I decided it was better than Wings, and got back up to dance.
Elizabeth, in a wholly successful attempt not to have her own picture taken, had snitched my camera and was taking pictures of the dancing. She took fifteen or twenty shots, but since Greg, T, and I were the only ones dancing, I wound up erasing most of the pictures the next day. The three or so that I kept get across the general silliness pretty well. (If you want to see them, the pictures are in the photo album.)
I'd stopped drinking around eight so I'd be sober enough for the drive home by ten or so. Good timing on my part, too, because K.T. decided to stretch out on the couch and rest around then.
Sunday, I slept in late, and spent the whole morning and a good portion of the afternoon reading. At various times, I'd look up, notice the time, realize I was still in my pajamas, and announce to the universe in general: "I am Slug-Woman!" I didn't actually get dressed until mid-afternoon, when Matt started the laundry and I realized that I really needed my pajamas to get washed.
My triumph of the day was that Matt, while downloading something that was taking longer than he thought, picked up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and began idly reading it - and immediately got sucked in. By the end of the day, he'd read all three books, too. He made some comparisons that I hadn't even thought of consciously - that Harry Potter is an awful lot like Books of Magic's Tim Hunter, for one; and that the huge, bumbling Hagrid has the "feel" of a Braz character. And he made one observation with which I heartily agreed: "That Malfoy is a stink!"
Now, to slip him Partners in Necessity...
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