Birthday Party (not mine, not yet)

Last night, we celebrated Juli’s quarter-century birthday at Jazz. Highlights included:

* In the pre-party category: the fact that I went to Hold and bought Juli’s gift, which included a lengthy conversation with the proprietress Zita on the topic of Juli’s tastes and my budget, all in Hungarian. I rock.

* As I was talking to Ági about her holiday, she broke into a fit of smiling animation when telling me how at the lousy party she and Geri went to, the first song they heard was “Emily’s song.” I spent a brief minute trying to remember what this might be (any guesses, reader....?) before she started humming, yes, “Don’tcha” by Pussy Cat Dolls. Wonderful.

* Watching Anita and Jacek, two fully grown adults, perfectly sober (as far as I know), playfully ruffling each others hair. All together now: aww......

* The Jazz serves a limited menu of food things, so as a birthday treat, Ági ordered for vegetarian Juli a plate of what was basically all the vegetables the cook could round up, deep-fat-fried. I helped her sample them. Deep-fat-fried broccoli? Absolutely amazing.

* Finally, towards the end of the evening, Geri taught us a drinking game which seemed remarkably like Circle of Death played with dice. But with fewer rules: roll a 9, person before you drinks. Roll an 11, person after you drinks. Roll double, you drink the number on one die and assign the others. Roll a four, grab your nose. Roll a 1 plus a 2, you become the Pigeon, and if anyone rolls a 3 on a single die after that, you drink. That’s it, I think. I miss Beloit.

I have also been up to various purposeful activities, such as coming up with new classroom games and discovering some incredible new blogs. But that'll come tomorrow.