I'm gonna be in the office

It appears I'll be spending a lot of time in the Expo's green room this weekend. You wanna know why? Because one of the guests is none other than the clown prince of the squared circle, Rowdy Roddy Piper.

Oh, man. I can finally tell him of the effect his "You Stick, You Stink, and the whole damn wedding stinks" speech had on me as a child.

Oh, man. I'm getting misty.

THEE STORIE OF THE MOST SURPRISING BIRTHDAY PARTEE OF ALL TYME SINCE THE LAST ONE!

Okay, let's go back a few weeks to start.

I decided to throw Cynra a surprise Bday party, as I had done previously. The initial invites were sent out as normal, via Email that was turned into an Evite.

Amusing story. hazy101 has the same email as a mailing list she moderates (Canadian Browncoats). In the past (such as when I sent a link to a particular douchebag's LJ) I've sent the email to the mailing list instead of to her directly.

The first time I did this, no big whoop. The second time I did this, it was the party invite. Whoops. No big whoop? Cynra's a member.

So, I leap into action. First off: delete email on Yahoogroups website. Second: Turn Cynra's subscription into "Special notices" so she doesn't get that email. Thirdly, delete the digest when she gets it anyway. Lastly, reinstate her subscription as normal so she doesn’t notice anything is awry.

This does cause her to miss an announcement from one of her friends who's just joined the list. I pass this on in conversation.

Attendance starts to come in. Some people can't make it, some can. Numbers begin to pile up. I do a quick check of my availability. There ain't no way I can do a menu like last time, which was garlic cilantro chicken fajitas & Spanish rice, although I wish I still had the marinade recipe. So I re-jig, and it's hot dog BBQ! Whee!

Plans begin to finalize: The party will meet at a nearby Cul De Sac and march over. I order a cake, and hand the cash to mr_weasel to pick it up. It has Superman on it, in order to invoke paroxysms of jealousy in redeem147.

I picked up my gift on the way to game on Thursday: A boxed set of Sapphire & Steel, to my eternal regret, plus Harvey Birdman season 1 to deaden the pain. Saturday, I tell Cynra a little white lie about the hot dogs, claiming I'm a member of my team social committee and need them for a work BBQ.

Yes, another lie. Only partially, anyway. I DID need them for a BBQ.

Saturday went rather well; we played a game of Caesar & Cleopatra, a game I’d purchased for her birthday several years previous, but hadn’t been played yet. I think she won. It’s one of those German two player games. It suffered from first game syndrome, in that we didn’t know all the rules until we were halfway through, but overall it was good.

Sunday she decided we were going to go to Crawford Lake. Oh. Okay, I said. There was a cover story in place: that being that eyebeams was going to come visit. Thankfully she didn’t know that he was recuperating from leg surgery. This would get us home by noon, so I could make it to the mustering point in time to rally the troops.

Crawford Lake was a very nice place to visit. It’s an old lake, of the kind where nothing, not even bacteria, lives below a certain point. Leaves that sink to the bottom never decompose, so it’s good for getting a long term view of the area. It also has a reconstructed aboriginal village, with the various gardens, some longhouses, and sundry accoutrements of native life in the 1400s.

On the way back we stopped at Tim’s for some bagels for breakfast. At that moment, atomiks called to tell me he was there. A moment of awkwardness followed, because I couldn’t exactly TELL him "Oh, okay, I’ll be there shortly" since Cynra was, in fact, sitting next to me.

After we got home, I headed out to pick up some cheese for our visitor. This was yet another prevarication, since I was in fact going to rally the troops.

We ended up waiting for a few people, but in the end everyone was there.

We marched across the park, up the sidewalk, and I arranged everyone on the driveway and knocked on the door. When Cynra answered, she was greeted with a chorus of “surprise”.

She was. Mission accomplished!

I’d like to thank everyone who gave me help in arranging the party, and who helped put things together when they got there. It turned out well, even when atomiks passed out on the couch.