The World of Stuff .com

Last days 16

Yesterday, my sister and I had our birthday dinner at Macaroni Grill, an Italian restaurant. Four of the six people I invited could make it — a pretty good turnout for the summer, but I didn’t invite people who I knew would be out of town. My sister’s friends have all known each other for centuries, so as we were waiting at the front of the restaurant, they all chatted up a storm. I thought it would be awkward for my friends because I wasn’t sure how well they all knew each other, even though they all go to my school. It turns out that they all did know each other, so that was good.

I got cards from almost everyone, I think. I even got a few actual gifts, both of which came with homemade cards. Nick and Mark brought a gift in a black garbage bag. I was afraid that it was one of Mark’s trademark grab-bag gifts (which he makes by putting anything he can find into a bag), but they assured me that it was something they had made in their engineering class at FAU. Michelle handed me a large, square, sort of flat gift wrapped in a brown paper package tied up with string. It felt like a coffee table book, but she said it wasn’t, and I was stumped.

We sat down to eat at a large table or two in the back of the restaurant. My friends promptly took to coloring on the large sheets of paper that cover the tables. Gilbert used it to give me a lesson in binary and how it relates to ASCII. We got food, and it was good, as usual. On my side of the table, the conversation was lively and interesting until everybody got to talking about Star Wars. I didn’t realize how much people can talk about Star Wars. People can talk about Star Wars a great deal.

Of course, the meal winded down with the customary dessert with a candle on top. They had some small cakes that were pretty good. And of course, I was curious to see what my presents were. The one from Nick and Mark was a bridge made out of newspaper and tape. The one from Michelle was some LPs by ELO, Stevie Wonder, Johnny Winter, Genesis, and others. I’m going to give those a listen when I have the chance. (The turntable is right next to the TV, and I never want to get in the way of anyone’s TV watching.) After some more conversation, people left, and we all went home.

Back when my sister and I had our large “dance” parties, I would analyze my birthday cards and find the Jordon-to-Jordan ratio to be consistently around 1:1. (I leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine which spelling is correct.) Looking at the cards, I was surprised to see that most of them had spelled my name right. I guess it just goes to show that your real friends are the ones who know how to spell your name. (By the way, this year’s award for the most creative spelling of my name goes to Mark, with “Jardín.” The award for the best card goes to Nick, with a graduation card for a granddaughter.)

Tomorrow is my real birthday. I’ll be turning 17, which makes me the young one among most of my friends. But still, I feel like I’m getting really old. I don’t want to be 17; there’s too much pressure! (Note to myself when I read this in ten to twenty years: Shut up! You don’t remember what it’s like!)

Luckily, I’ve never had AOL, but it’s commonly known that canceling your account with them is a nightmare. So when some guy decided to cancel his rarely-used account, he was wise enough to record the phone conversation. Listen in horror as the customer support guy tries everything he can to talk him out of canceling the account.

These days most radio stations stream their broadcasts on the Internet. Live-Radio.net is a large, searchable database of radio streams from around the world. Now it’s easier than ever to find interesting radio stations that you can listen to anywhere.

One year ago: “Twenty cool points to Greasemonkey.”
Two years ago: “I’ll probably play around some more tonight.”