Ms. Austin

My Placesetting Card
Originally uploaded by M Kawamoto.

I went to Austin's cousin's wedding on Saturday. The ceremony was at St. Hugo of the Hills, which is a really nice church. It was a bit different than other churches I've been to though, there was this throne for the priest, and giant altar in the middle of place. There were also some Filipino wedding traditions that they followed, which was a little different. Still, a beautiful service.

The reception wasn't for a couple hours after that though, so I went home for a bit, saw Beckie who was taking the dogs to a dog park (Thanks Beckie and Sarah too.), and chilled out. I decided to stop by the Apple Store at Somerset for a bit as the reception was at the Somerset Inn, across the street from the mall. I ran into Audrey, Allen and Austin's cousin Michael there, as they had mentioned they were going there. We left the mall and went to the reception.

They had name tags for all the tables and Vic (Austin's cousin) mentioned something about my tag being under Austin's name. When I found the tag (as shown above), I laughed. And then I was teased mercilessly as "Ms. Austin."

The reception was a lot of fun. Austin was quite drunk when the wedding party entered the reception. Also, Austin had put his guest down for a vegetarian meal, so I had to finagle the waiter into bringing me the beef entree. The food ended up being pretty good, and the rest of the party was a good time.

So, Congratulations to Vic and Lea. Thanks for the good time.

Edit: Forgot to mention that I've been dogsitting Scooter this last weekend. That's why Beckie and Sarah (Beckie's sister) came over to walk and play with the dogs (plural, you see). "Mike"'s picking up Scooter this afternoon.

Also, I love parentheses. Even if I use them incorrectly.

Love the grammar ninja!

Car bombed...

Went out to Novi last night to go out with Jenn. We ended up going to Gus O'Connor's again, and sitting in the same booth we sat in last time. We waited for other people to show up, but only Jenn's friend Mike (Another Asian Mike) and his friend Tom showed up.

We had Irish Car Bombs and some more beers and Jenn and I had those Chambord drinks that she likes, and well, I hadn't had anything to eat since 4:30, so I was pretty drunk. Actually on the drive back to Jenn's I began to feel drunker, as some of the alcohol must have begun to absorb more. I ended laying on the floor of Jenn's bathroom for a while as I was a bit spin-y. Then I passed out on her couch. Another Asian Mike and Tom were sleeping on the floor.

I woke up about 5:15AM and headed home. I didn't know that it actually starts to get light outside about that time. Obviously because it's so close to the solstice that there are a lot of hours of daylight, but I just didn't realize I slept through so many of them usually.

Oh, my liver.

Card Sharks and other sea creatures

Friday was uneventful except for going to dinner with Dan at Olga's.

Saturday was hot. I mostly watched TV and stayed in the air-conditioning. Austin and I did end up going to the El Grande Azteca Mexican restaurant across from Oakland Mall. We were pleasantly surprised to find they had finally acquired a liquor license. Later, we headed to Beckie's cousin's house where Beckie was cat-sitting the hairless cats. We played Balderdash and eventually UNO all while drinking 'forties'.

Playing UNO reminded me of another card game we used to play a lot in high school, Egyptian Rat Screw, or as we commonly abbreviated it, ERS. I couldn't remember how to play it so I ended up looking it up when I got home. The rules sounded familiar, as did the warnings of violence.

Here's links to some various sites with the rules. One of the variant rules that I had never heard of, was the "Pyromania" rule, where if 666 was played, then the deck had to be burned. We probably would have gotten in a fair amount of trouble for kind of pyromania.

Egyptian Ratscrew
Egyptian Ratscrew

Last night Dan and I went to the WAB for cheap booze and they had $2.50 margaritas. Excellent. Austin also stopped by for a time. Good times.

Ha!

Pearls Before Swine for today

Close Encounters or rather Near-Close Encounters

Totally weird.

I went to dinner with John last night, 'cause Julie was working late. We ended up going to the Quizno's on 14 Mile, and we're sitting there eating, I'm on the phone with Dan, and I look up and I see a car that looks familiar turning into the parking lot. I'm looking at the driver and it looks a lot like Fisher. The car pulls in and it is Chris. He sees John and I and gives me kind of a dirty look and then turns his car around and drives off. Freakin' bizarre.

Also, last night we also played poker at Austin's. I played horribly and got screwed a couple times. I ended up losing second. John was actually one of three left at the table by the time I ended up leaving, so I'm not sure how John placed.

Like a Good Neighbor

I was going to mention this before, but this last weekend I had a bit of a confrontation with my neighbor, but it was in a good way. My neighbors to the left I haven't talked to much before, and when I was outside this weekend, the neighbor asked me if I didn't like them. I don't dislike them and thought they didn't like me, and we realized that we had just kind of misunderstood each other. We're starting over. I'm making an effort to say hi and just be a good neighbor.

I know that I didn't really make an effort before, but as is my way, I mostly keep to myself. That and most interactions we had had before weren't always positive, e.g. the late-night-howling episode. So, really it's really mostly my fault that we haven't been neighborly.

So in the knowledge that I'm likely to be living next to these people for a least a couple more years, I might as well be friendly if not necessarily friends.

Toledo! Oh, Toledo!

I'm still rather tired this morning. I don't think I even heard my alarm clock this morning. This is due to my weekend.

Friday Austin and I went out to Novi to have dinner with Ryan and Jenn. We went to Happy Sushi and um, yum, sushi. Then we went over Fountain Walk to the Emagine to see a movie. We were going to see The Break Up but had just missed a showing and decided against waiting for the next showtime, instead opting to go to a bar. We went to Gus O'Connors in the "Main Street" Novi area. We sat in a booth that had window directly to the bar.

Convenient. We had some Irish Car bombs and I think I had a Boddingtons, Smithwicks and a Black and Tan. Tasty. Someone had a craving for ice cream so we headed to Meijer after that. I bought some Skippy stuff, like rawhides and a bowl mat to help contain his spillage. I think I ended up getting home about 3, not sure, but it was late.

Saturday morning I had to get up to meet "Mike" and drop off Skippy for the night. "Mike" and I went out to get some dim sum too, as he had a exhibit that evening and he had a performance piece that involved serving dim sum food, so he was picking up a to-go order also.

After leaving "Mike"'s, I did some yard work and also decided to wash and wax my car.

Later, Austin and I went down to Toledo for Ryan's "June 10th" party. Austin and I hadn't eaten yet, so after stopping in at Ryan's we went out to Long John Silver's. There were some pretty sketchy people around. There was a guy at the restaurant wearing a Dio t-shirt. On our way back to Ryan's we stopped at the liquor store. I'm not sure who was dodgier, the people that worked there or the customers. Anyway though, I bought a six-pack of Beast Ice tall-boys for only $3.00. Awesomely cheap. After a bit of pre-partying, we went to the RHouse. There was much drinking. It was amazingly cheap at that bar. I ended up falling asleep/passing out soon after we got back to Ryan's apartment.

Jenn slept inside a monkey.

In the morning we went out for pancakes. IHOP not very international we decided. I also unfortunately had to cough when I had a mouth full of coffee, spraying some on Ryan. This made Jenn laugh hysterically for several minutes.

Eventually we made it home. I was tired and after picking up Skippy from "Mike"'s I did laundry and watched TV. I also watched Grandma's Boy, which while it did have a few funny parts, is probably much funnier if you are as stoned as the guys acting in the movie, writing the movie, directing the movie, and editing the movie.

Yawn.

Beep beep boop *beep* bloop! blurp...

Well, looks like the wireless portion of my router has died. That's $50 bucks I didn't really want to spend. I guess I can get by as the regular wired part is still working. I'm not sure what caused it to stop working, but I did have a brief power outage yesterday morning, and that could have fried it. I guess it's time to upgrade. I'm going to try a few more things tonight to try to revive it, but from looking on the internet, it's not an entirely uncommon thing to happen with these, especially considering it's about 4 or 5 years old.

This is what I have.

This is what I'm considering getting.


Yes, they look nearly identical. But the new one would be faster for computers that support that speed. So, any of my neighbors leaching off my signal could download whatever they wanted faster.

Poker? I hardly know her!

Well, there was a lot of poker playing this weekend. Thursday night we played at Austin's, I came in 4th, just out of the money.

Friday night, Austin and I went to his cousin's friend's place to play. I ended up down about 20 bucks that night.

Saturday, John came over to pick up his chairs and tables. We were putting something in the trunk of John's car and because we didn't latch the gate, Skippy managed to push it open and took off down the street. Luckily we cornered him in a neighbor's yard before he got too far. Later, I went to Austin's where Gerry and Jordan eventually showed up and we played Guitar Hero. They left after while and being hungry, Austin and I went to late night Dim-Sum place for food and then to Lucky's in Novi to meet up with Steve for his birthday.

Sunday, my parents came over to plant my garden, I now have 3 tomatoes and a jalapeno plant growing. I also cleaned my gutters out as there was a tiny forest growing in them.

I watched two movies I got in the mail, Date Movie, which was horrible, and American Pie: Band Camp , which was less horrible. Band Camp definitely was the more boob-filled movie. Neither is the pinnacle of film-making, but at least I laughed more than 3 times at Band Camp.

I still a lot of TV to catch up on in the meantime. You know where you can find me, chilling on the couch in the A/C, drinking a beer.