It has been a good week.
On Thursday, I celebrated my golden birthday by inviting a bevy of friends over for smores on my back porch. In spite of the intermittent rain, the fire burned on, many marshmallows were roasted, and almost as many were consumed. We eventually moved inside to play a round of the greatest game, resulting in a particularly lovely illustration of a triumphant pizza. A fine festival of food and friends, reminding me just why I live here in the first place.
On Friday, one of my friends was kind enough to take me out to an all-you-can-eat Chinese Buffet as a birthday dinner. As some of you know, this is how I celebrate Christmas, so it really was like Christmas in July. Two other friends joined us, and I tried to explain the art of the chinese Buffet to them. Sometimes I don't buffet well, but I was determined to honor this birthday present by properly experiencing the buffet that night. Instead of piling a plate high, I entered knowing I was going to spend two hours there. I began with a very demure plate, four small selections of food, each one no more than three bites worth. I ate slowly, chewed often, and paced myself. I took only small portions, and never filled my plate enough to have foods run into each other. I was there for the long haul, and long after our two other friends had left from being full, I finished my final crab rangoon and thanked my host.
On Saturday, I helped one of those two friends to move, as did most of our local circle. It was a prodigious amount of stuff, but many hands helped move it all in three hours or so, a feat you cannot truly appreciate unless you saw how much stuff was there. As reward, she bought us all Chinese dinner, which we consumed on someone else's back porch, hanging out with friends again.
Today, I looked at the results of the Style Invitational to find that I had finally won first runner-up, and my quest for the pen is now complete. This, along with a few honorable mentions, made today's showing a lovely throwback to my successes of last year. And while today may not be as friend-filled as the past three, there is still food. Or there was-- I've now eaten almost all of the pound of delicious uber-gourmet popcorn my aunt bought me for my birthday, which I should really remember to thank her for.
Now if I can find a place to live and get someone to buy the book I'm working on, I will be perfectly content.