words like violence break the silence

yesterday was my birthday, so i had a joint celebration with ken (whose bday was earlier in the month). we went wine tasting in sonoma valley with a few lucky people who could happen to make it. it was a pretty epic time-- i had a mushroom burger with mushrooms, we visited ravenswood and got a bunch of free swag (including a button in french that roughly translated to "no wet chicken wine"-- "wet chicken" is apparently an idiom for "wimpy" in french!), ken made us look even more like tourists with his (sometimes mischievously misleading) tom-tom, several of us trespassed on a piece of machinery, aj and james saw a hummingbird fight, i sang depeche mode's "enjoy the silence" for a cheesemonger, james and i molested marilyn monroe, gretchen got told she looked like she was 12, we bought some truffles, alan almost got raped by some casual wine guys, everyone posed for pictures with odd statues (including a dogdragon, a t-rex and a bronzed redwood tree root), and we tried many, many wines-- among them a zinfandel port that was hands-down honestly the best wine i ever tasted (much like the woman in keswick who had the best chips ever, the guy at the counter did not believe me. i might have looked very drunk at this point, but still, have a little pride and faith in your product yo). i also took many many pictures with the nifty new lens ken got me (a canon 18-55 mm with image stabilization). it garners more light, takes less blurry pictures in the dark, and has a wider angle of view-- all wins for indoor photography, which is the bane of my existence normally).

after all that, we went to kathmandu for dinner where even more people showed up, and i clumsily introduced everyone to each other, and we had a nice meal. then back to our house for the best birthday cake in the world (a two-layer ice cream cake from cold stone, with a koala-guinea pig hybrid drawn on top-- the thing weighed at least 15 pounds). i finally met alan's girlfriend, and anna gave me yarn, and mike gave me a gorilla pod for my camera. james gave me the dianetics book on tape (?) and some sort of sheep knitting needle holders (guess which one i appreciated more, lol). :) sara and karl came up too, yay! and everyone met wilson (karl was constantly being tickled by the little guy walking all over him, and in one case the poor thing made it down the back of his shirt! karl just has bad luck with animals i guess). toward the end of the evening, our party of course degenerated into watching youtube videos, mostly the doctor who fanvids we'd done with james. ken made the apt point that they're sort of like our version of slides-- y'know, the kind that people used pull out when they had unwitting guests.

i had a wonderful day yesterday. my philosophy has long been that there is no point to doing anything if there is not a touch of the absurd involved. thanks for helping me fulfill that, guys, by making the day as unique and fun as possible :)