Pre-birthday-party party: The best Saturday IRM

[epilonious]

So, Friday was a pretty good day. BelfryExpress came up after my work-teleconference-meeting and we nabbed RusticIllusion from work and went to RuSan-Buckhead. There was some traffic silliness, but Belfry being there made it 40,000 times easier, as Belfry is entertaining and wonderful. Belfry and I stuffed ourselves from the buffet, and RusticIllusion had a big bundle of tempura food. BelfryExpress paid for all of us... so I need to remember to get him some of his rolls next time at Circle Sushi. We dropped RusticIllusion back off at work, and then drove back to my place where Araken was home because of a half-day. Belfry hung out for a bit, but I was called into a long-running design meeting so he went on home (and apparently had a hell of a time getting there, yay Top-End Atlanta on a Friday). I finished up some work stuff, Araken was home and sort of working, Eric came home, there was some snuggles, and then Eric just sort of realized he hadn't slept well all week and he was in a bed. Thus, he fell asleep at 7:00 and I, left to my own devices, made some dinner, baked some cookies and went down to hang with the Belfry, the RusticIllusion, and the GaTech boys.

All of the Merkur team appreciated the cookies. They had spent most of the prior week sandblasting, rust-dissolving, and re-painting (rattle-can black of course) the rusted gas tank. We decided that it would be easier to do that than try and replace the gas tank with an original of dubious quality or remodify a bunch of stuff to install a fuel cell. Either way, it now has a working fuel-level sender and a new fuel pump, and I got to help install it. We got a new gasket for the fuel pump assembly, put new RTV in the seal for the filler neck, put on the plastic tank cover and strapped everything back in. One of the things that was mentioned is that Cayce, Kabo, and Pat were planning on going to the Atlanta Beer Festival in perimeter mall (about 3 miles from where I live) and they asked if they could park at my place and get me to shuttle them to and from said beer festival. I said sure, and then Belfry warned me that he and Rustic would be coming up for a movie night after studying. So, I then headed home and warned a sleepy Eric that lots of people were coming the next day.

Saturday actually started off a bit stormy. I knew there was a bunch of trees out in the yard that needed to be cut into bag-sized pieces, I desperately wanted to wash my car since it had picked up lots of crap from the road trip the prior weekend, and Eric had gotten another slap-in-the-face from Sprint (last weekend consisted of Sprint slapping Eric and his family in the face repeatedly while I was thankfully in Charlotte/Rock Hill) so he went off to the Sprint store with the "if the cops call, come bail me out" line. I washed my car and I washed Geoff's car, and Eric eventually came home with the good news that Sprint had already voided whatever charge for which they sent him notification. So, I washed his car too, since the car-washing stuff was out, and then I changed into tree-choppin' gear right about the time Erik, Pat, Cayce, and Jeff showed up. I drove them in my Mazda (Pat quipped "for the upcoming review, mention it [the mazda3] does NOT comfortably seat five adults"). I dropped them off, after asking if they wanted dinner with us (they said yes) so I came back and told Eric that there would be a need to feed 9. It was the ultimate impromptu party.

I started chopping away at the trees, and Eric watched me for a bit and then went off to the farmers market to get crawfish, shrimp, and corn. I finished with the tree stuff and Eric got back and asked me to pick up some extra grillables like burger meat, hot dogs, and things that go on them, and I made a store run getting sodas, chips, buns, pickles and meats. I got back and started to clean the house up a bit, focusing on sweeping everything and scrubbing the bathroom fixtures. Belfry and Rustic showed up as I finished scrubbing, and then it was time for me to pick up the much more inebriated bits of team Merkur.

The drive back was a hoot, but in that "I really wish I had set the child locks" way. Jeff was stuck in the middle of the back seat and kept asking to get out to talk to people about their nice cars and such. While we were leaving the shopping center he rolled down the window and shouted at some lady, I got it back up and used the window locks for the rest of the trip. It wasn't that bad however, as no-one was as drunk as the guy who kept walking into the middle of the mall road flipping people off, and everyone was amicable and chatty.

When we got back, Eric had finished roasting the corn inside the husk (I didn't know you could cook corn that way, but when you peeled the husk off it was moist and delicious). and was putting on the shrimp. I found I failed at making proper sized burger patties, so Belfry was called in to do that, and eventually everything that rolled off the new grill was just so, so wonderfully tasty. Everyone was well fed and compliments were rolling around. The people who felt like drinking a bit more forgot after being introduced to wonderful food. I really cannot praise Eric's cooking enough. He is a savant when it comes to grilling and stove-top. He is actually finishing up the gumbo he started yesterday, and he made his own brick colored roux.

After eating, Cayce, Pat, Jeff and Erik left to head home, full of food and the booze burned off. I went with Belfry and Rustic to meet Dwath at DDR, where I danced my pants off, and finally, we three joined Eric in watching "Another Gay Movie" which was pretty much American Pie for the gay High School kids. There were some wonderful moments that made us laugh our ass off. Finally, Belfry and Rustic went home and Eric and I snuggled more.

It was a deliciously wonderful Saturday. Everyone was jovial and well fed and I got stuff done and everything just sort of fell into place. I am sort of melancholy now because I have to fly out at 7:00AM tomorrow to McLean, VA and stay for 4 days for work, and I haven't done it in so long it has filled me with trepidation. I am sure I will be fine, I just ramp up a lot for these trips and I still have some stuff to do today so I am all nervous. But, I am still excited because I have a birthday weekend coming up, and there will be a bunch of cool people around for it.