Well, it's about that time...Monday is Jake's birthday. Wednesday is Kelly's birthday. Friday is...um...hah, oh yes, my birthday. Last night, I created my own after party and watched "Sixteen Candles," a movie I own, yet, never seen. It was actually good. It was well scripted, it was really funny, and it was rated R for nudity and language and probably teen partying. It was about a girl who had her sixteenth birthday and wanted the boy of her dreams. Her parents forgot about her birthday.
Which is a big difference from Kelly's birthday. 24 hours ago from the very second I am writing this, around 5pm, I was on my way to the Old Country Buffet. I had a present in my arms and was trying to think of some interesting way of handing it off to the birthday girl. I don't think my way had any style, but Kelly said "Aww, you didn't have to, the invitation said no gifts."
Upon arriving at the Old Country Buffet, a well known family restaurant, a buffet, that I used to go to when I was 12 and under, we met up with Matt and Sara (not the same Sara I talk about) and walked into the restaurant after talking outside for a while. We were seated after paying and we got a nice long table. This was after Listy had shown up and was afraid of a man who had been looking at her in a threatening way. Apparently she almost took his car door off when parking.
Old Country Buffet has all the good stuff like orange chicken (usually paired with rice), macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, pizza, sometimes spaghetti, but not last night. There is some devil of a secret ingredient that fills you right up in there. Having a second helping seems like too much. I had a salad my second time around. Matt, Listy, and I talked about a lot of different things and soon the whole table became quiet, which is very noticeable with such an abundance of people, even though less than expected showed up. I don't like huge gatherings, but this would have been okay because I pretty much focused on communicating with Matt, Listy, and the birthday girl herself, who I had the pleasure of sitting by...when she wasn't socializing with her much older friends.
Two girl's left, including Listy, and Kelly's older friends, who are in their 20's left once we all decided to get up outta here. But...but this was after Kelly opened her presents, and everyone got her something. My gift was $15 towards any music in Best Buy. Some people got her just a card, maybe with money in it, but once Robert showed up, his gift was the most entertaining.
Robert is in my Video Production class. He is extremely nice to everybody and seems to fit in everywhere. His gift was wrapped in tin foil. Instead of a ribbon, his gift had duct tape. Then, to top that off, a sticky note said that it was to Kelly [Last name, as if another Kelly would have taken it]. Once Kelly got through the beautiful wrapping of tin foil, she found out that she received "Amazon Trail," to which everybody laughed. That is a computer game that is practically a rip off of Oregon Trail, by the same company, I'm sure.
Dinner was a lot of fun, don't you doubt, but it only got better. I was re-introduced to an ice cream machine and I told everybody how I had free ice cream on the four day cruise. Once we got to Kelly's grandparent's house, I had gotten the transportation from Kelly's mom and Robert followed us in his van. We knew it was him because of his awesome Indiana Jones-like hat.
The fire was already started. I enjoyed my Jones Soda from a can, and we played "Catch Phrase." There were two Rachel's there, both very smart, they study all of the time and one of these are very interested in Dramatic Arts. Playing catch phrase with them was a lot of fun. The dramatic one is very competitive, a debater. I had plenty of good ones and it wasn't really a game, I don't know who ever won. Playing these kinds of games, which I only have played with a certain group of people, changed for the better. I'm not saying it was more fun that my normal group, but it was different. People should welcome change, because change is an adventure.
Cake time rolled around and we went inside and swapped funny stories about our pets. I forget what I said, but I wasn't very talkative. I sat back with Sara and one of the Rachel's while the other three, Kelly, Drama Rachel, and Rob told really funny stories.
I didn't eat much cake at all because not only was I full, but I'm not a cake guy. Rob is an outdoorsman, and we soon went back out to the fire, which was dying too slowly to complain about cold. It was warm, I took my jacket off it was so nice. As cold as it was, it was really nice.
Robert got out his acoustic guitar and banjo and serenaded Kelly with songs. One of the first songs he learned was one of the themes to Jurassic Park. It took me a while, but I recognized it. But that wasn't what serenaded me. He played Mexican styled music which sounded like something out of "Desperado." I talked to him about "Once Upon a Time in Mexico," and how Johnny Depp wrote a song and how Antonio Banderas wrote a song and the director did the music, too. That movie rocks because of it's music and I was reminded of it once Robert started playing away. We played a little catch phrase until Kelly had the brilliant idea of going for a walk.
The less dramatic Rachel had just left and the rest of us went for a walk. Kelly had a large field behind her grandparent's house. They live on a farm. A ways out there, we were parallel to a fence. Rob and I tried to cross it and the wire smacked up against to a wooden pole. Kelly screamed and we were all silent for a second.
"What the hell was that?"
"Who's that man watching us in the distance?"
"Shut up, Chris."
A little farther out there, we paused to enjoy a "scary romantic" viewing of the stars. It was really nice. I told Rob about how I only get to do this up north and he agreed. I don't know if he has a cottage or something up north, though. We turned off all of our flashlights, everybody had one, and it was perfectly dark. I was reminded of the article that Ben (drama guy) wrote about Williamston's Haunted House for Halloween. The scariest thing, to Ben, is the dark. I would love to film out behind Kelly's house. My grandpa has a corn field and I think I'd use that for next year's Halloween show.
We turned around after a while and walked back. Robert and I looked at some big stump of dirt and then ducked down. The girl's flashlights went all over the place. They could see us every couple of steps we took, and we circled in front of them and then ran up to scare them, but hit the fence and it didn't work. I need to work on my stealth attacks.
When we got back, drama Rachel's mom was there and Sara left, too.
Kelly had gotten Now 17 for her birthday and I asked her to burn it for me and she also gave me the Evanescence song, too. Awesome stuff. Rob and I stayed and looked at Kelly's awesome Imac flatscreen. There was a bunch of cool programs, like IDVD, and I think Imovie, but no GarageBand. I wish.
GarageBand is an Imac program that has instrumental sounds that you can piece together to create your own music. It is really an awesome program. I was talking about the "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" director, Robert Rodriguez, who uses a slightly different program, but only slightly. His program has a bunch of different sounds, but he uses a piano keyboard connected to his computer and plays any music he wants and pieces together a bunch of different music using the computer. This is how music is made, on computer, and for some reason that was hard for me to believe. I knew it, I had just never seen a program like that before.
I got my CD, which I'll call "To Chris Heart Kelly." It's Now 17. Kelly also gave me a Terror Squad CD a while ago, during summer, and I like that. Robert and I have similar tastes in music which ranged from: "pretty much everything."
Rob left, hugged Kelly and wished her a happy birthday. "It's always a pleasure hangin out with you, Robert," I said and he left saying something about GarageBand, but I didn't hear.
Kelly and her mom were driving to their own house and nicely gave me a ride home and we talked about how much fun the night was. We said what we were gonna do when we got home. It was a good end to the night.
"I don't think I've ever had that much fun." - Kelly.
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