last friday i turned 24. i've had 3 or 4 interesting things happen since then. i'm close to saying "fuck it, let's just move on" because there's a lot to write, but that would just be lazy.

friday
didn't have work. woke up, went home from jen's, waited around for a bit and the doorbell finally rang. got two large boxes, 20lbs each, from fedex. inside one box was all the innards for my new computer, and inside the other box was the case for my new computer. i started putting things together, around 2 i realized i should friggin sleep, so i did for a few hours. woke up, put in the final bits of my computer. it turned on, but i didn't hook up a monitor (wasn't expecting it to turn on), so that was nice. didn't have time to fiddle with it any more. showered, got dressed in a nice shirt and slacks, and went over to jen's. one of her roomies took pictures of us in our dressed up state, and then we got in a cab and went down to the prudential tower for our 8:30 reservation at the top of the hub. she got spinach salad and wild mushroom lasagna, i got spicy lobster soup and the sirloin. dessert was creme brulee and chocolate mousse. the view was incredible - it was good that we got reservations at 8:30 as opposed to really early because the city was much prettier at night. they had some sort of a live jazz thing going on too, which was cool. it's a very classy, hip kinda place. clearly the manager/owner/whatever had a vision and it was pretty well executed. i liked it.

took a cab back to jen's, where i got fun birthday presents, including what i consider the centerpiece (besides the meal, of course) - 4.4 lbs of watermelon jelly beans, straight from the factory. two 2.2 lb bags. amazing. before my freshman year my sister went to a sweet factory near where we lived and got all the watermelon jelly beans they had and put them in a mason jar and sent me off to college with them. they were an essential tool in bonding with thaddeus. so yeah. really good stuff. unfortunately i didn't have time to relax or anything, because it was time to go home and go to work.

saturday
i went home, packed up my gamecube and tiger woods and a 12pack of coke and headed in to work. we had a 1am release that was supposed to go until 9 or 10. i won't get into the details but i ended up being there from 12:30am to 1pm, i got in about 50 holes of golf on the 42" plasma tv, and i drank half the six-pack.

got home around 1:30 or 2, and i finished the computer up and got windows on it. then i sat on my bed, with computer boxes all around me, and tried sleeping. couldn't do it. signed on for a bit on the laptop, turned on the tv, and i was sorta watching it... but then i was out. i woke up at midnight with my contacts bugging the hell out of me and the tv still on.

sunday
i went to the bathroom to take out my contacts, only to find that my right eye didn't have any contact lens in it at all. went back to my bed where i saw the dried out remains of my second to last contact lens. the last contact lens, of course, was in my left eye. so now i don't have contact lenses. whatever, time for floating around. i turned on the tv, looked on the laptop to see thad was around, and checked on the new computer. plenty of activities. thad was around, playing cards of course, so i talked to him for a bit. i found dances with wolves on the history channel of all places, so i kept it on for the most part. i got windows xp running on the new computer and worked on setting it up, which took up a lot of time. i got through the 4 hour presentation of dances with wolves (verdict: some great scenes, lots of terrible scenes, still hate kevin costner, phil WOULD like kevin costner, and the score was really good) and well into some rerun of a MLS game on fox soccer channel. saw some other weird movie too. honestly i had no idea what was going on. i passed out again at 6. woke up a couple of times cuz of phone calls, but pretty much stayed asleep until 10:30am.

i made myself get up though. had to. otherwise my schedule woulda been f'd up forever. i went back to work on the computer, knowing that i had plans to have dinner with jen and her family (parents + sister) that night. i've never spent more than 5 minutes with her parents so i was pretty nervous. also, i didn't have any contact lenses, so i'd be wearing my (old) glasses. eek. never sleep without taking out your contacts. anyways, i went over to the mall to exchange my zen micro (the headphone jack was kind of loose and it was distorting, i got a new white one), and got ready for the big dinner.

we met over at a chinese restaurant near fenway. dinner was good, i got along fine with the parents, and everything was going swimmingly. i really thought it was going as well as i could have hoped - jokes were going over well, the small talk was going well, we were making fun of the terrible service at the chinese restaurant, but the food was good so no one's spirits were down... i mean, as good as i could have hoped. after dinner, we went to jen's apartment and then to j.p. lick's, and the inevitable disaster struck.

the line to jp lick's is jen, me, jen's dad, jen's sister. jen and i order, and jen tells her diad "niv's got me". jen's dad waits for a second, and says "wow, thanks niv!" really enthusiastically. i thought this was a strange reaction. i moved on, paid for jen and i, and as i was walking away, i heard "wait, he didn't pay for it?"

i rushed back but it was too late, jen's dad had already paid for the ice cream. i really would have paid for the ice cream if i realized that was what was going on. and man, it would have hit the whole night out of the park.

but i blew it

and that was my weekend.