Justin's Birthday

In other news, Laurel and I successfully pulled off surprising Justin (twice) for his birthday. Friday morning, Dan and Ace somehow convinced him to come to our house at 6:30am to "carpool" to work. God knows how he decided that was a wise choice, but he showed up and a couple of us were there waiting to surprise him with muffins and mimosas. Then we all trekked (ok, got a car ride) down to the 22nd street Caltrain station to ride with him to work. It was fun! I was pretty sick still, but I enjoyed seeing how other people commute, and the Baby Bullet train was impressively fast and efficient. If it was easier for me to get to the SF station or from the station to my work, I could see traveling like that more often. Pretty comfy. Then Laurel and I turned right back around and rode north again, she to catch a BART to the East Bay and me to head back home and work from home since I'm sick. (Yeah, I realize that not doing the commute is part of the point of working from home, but whatever.) I had a pretty good day at home, and then when evening rolled around it was time to prepare for our 2nd part surprise.

So Justin had already planned his own party, sort of. He had people coming over to his house for some Little Star pizza, and then more people coming for drinks later. Since he was turning 24 (double dozens) on the 22nd (double deuce), his theme was "Diapered Dapperness." It was really just an excuse for him to wear his overalls. OUR plan was to "hijack" his party. We had two other houses prepared to host a party, and so we were going to surprise Justin at his place with the news that we were going to take him on a progressive party throughout the Mission. The surprise part didn't go so well, thanks to me, in the sense that we didn't get to jump out and yell at him, but he was definitely surprised that we'd planned this extra party thing. We had themes for each of the houses, too. At his house the theme was "Dudes and Dandies," honoring his unique fashion sense, and so the beverage was Miller High Life forties (and some cans for those who didn't want to really go there) -- the connection there being "High Life, High Fashion." The next house was "Delectable Desserts," where we had double scoops (ice cream sundaes), black and white cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and birthday cake, the latter two both made by Laurel. We also had two kinds of Boones Farm, which is so sweet it might as well be a dessert. (I should interject here that I was super impressed with people's willingness to drink only those drinks assigned to themes -- and really ghetto drinks at that. I mean, Boones Farm and High Life. Classy.) Finally, we went to our house, where the theme was "Daniels and Dali," honoring Justin's famous moustache and featuring bourbon/whiskey-and-ginger-ales. We somehow managed to keep people together on this progressive, and our house was pretty packed. There was a detour to Beauty Bar for dancing, and then nearly everyone came back to our place, where I promptly went to bed but the party continued for a bit longer. All in all it was a pretty awesome night. Sadly, or perhaps fortunately, it was undocumented. All I really have to show for it are the posters/signs I made for decoration. Here's my favorite:


I don't think I've really managed to pull off a surprise like this ever, except for Silvia's birthday party our sophomore year, which was smooth mainly because Laurel neatly deflected Silvia's interest in a cooler being carried up the stairs by reciting two weird last names of random kids in our dorms. Really.