With a little help from my friends
Thu Jul 10, 2008 20:22 (UTC -5)It’s birthday season. I know a lot of people whose birthdays are this month. Besides me, there are some of my best friends, some of my pretty okay friends, and also some friends of friends who were born in July. This is a story of one of the latter… or, rather, the last.
Well, okay. I have a friend named Jarian whose has a girlfriend with the similar-sounding name Gerri. She’s come into Jarian’s and my greater social circle to an admirable degree. (I guess if one wants to be someone’s lover, one really does got to get with that person’s friends.) Her birthday is in July, and so is mine. Her party was at the same time that I planned to have birthday-related plans. I didn’t mean to steal guests away from her luau-themed pool party, but it’s Saturday, and my birthday’s on Sunday, so it’s also convenient for me. Needless to say, I wouldn’t be able to go to her birthday-related festivities… or so I thought.
She said that her actual birthday was the upcoming Tuesday (two days ago) and that she would be celebrating by going to Bonefish Mac’s with some people on that night. She invited me to that, and I was all, okay, that’s cool. So I went, and it was pretty cool. My friend Nick was there also, probably so he’d be able to go to my party. After dinner, we went to the beach, which is basically the default thing to do if you have a bunch of young types who don’t know what to do at night. Unfortunately, the beach is fiercely windy at night, but we still had fun playing ball for a while.
Gerri turned 16, meaning that she was, like, 15 and three quarters when I met her. That’s kind of weird. I mean, I wasn’t 16 very long ago, but there’s kind of a big difference between being 15 and being 18. I wouldn’t have guessed that she was so young, so I guess I’d say that she acts a little older than she is. Or maybe I act younger than I am?
Yesterday, Nick came to my house, and we did something we hadn’t done in a long time. We jammed. Back in the day, we would play right into my tape recorder, but now I have digital multitrack technology, so we can overlay layers of sound. Oh, it is big fun, and I’m rather pleased with the results. We recorded all Beatles songs: “Please Please Me,” “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “With a Little Help from My Friends,” and “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.” I can’t wait for Nick to hear the mixes.
Right after that, Nick and I went to Mike’s house and hung out for a while. We canoed in the canal, played video games, shot some hoops, and did other stuff to pass the time until the evening rolled around. I think the original plan was to go to a huge mall, but we got some other people together and went to Chili’s instead. And then there was the after-dinner outside-the-restaurant chatting, which is always good for some laffs. I had a good time.
Here are (according to someone) the 15 Funniest Police Blotters. They all look pretty real.
In the US presidential election of 2000, it became clear that the winner of the popular vote might not win the presidency due to that thing called the electoral college, which does the actual voting for president. Each state has a certain number of electoral votes based on its population, and the candidate who gets 270 votes is the winner. I’ve long assumed that each state had to assign its votes in a winner-take-all fashion, but that’s not necessarily the case. Each state can decide how it assigns its electoral votes. It turns out that this may be the key to abolishing the electoral college, an idea that a majority of Americans have favored for at least 60 years. Rather than changing the constitution (a notoriously difficult process), it’s just a matter of convincing enough states to assign their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact has been submitted in almost every state legislature, and four states have already approved it. If states with a total of 270 electoral votes approve the agreement, it will go into force among them, ensuring that America’s voters directly choose the president.
And finally, here are (according to someone) 8 of the World’s Most Unusual Postage Stamps. They are pretty unusual.
