Jim's 40th Birthday Party

Jim's 40th birthday party theme was "Star Wars", which should be no surprise. What surprised me was the news that they were hiring people to dress up as Princess Leia and Darth Vader to attend the party. I swear I didn't know this was just a casual joke, I'm sure I heard it mentioned several times as earnest fact, and it creeped me out not a little. Strange are the Sweeneys and strange their humor.

Arrived late and most of the guests were watching the Triple Crown horse race on Jim's big, imposing TV. This horse race was explained to me but I still don't understand. It sounds like one horse won a third of the race, another horse won the second third, and the actual winner of the race was yet to be determined. Whatever, but a Triple Crown sounds pretty cool. Like all unfair things in life, though, they probably won't let the horse wear it, they'll probably give it to the friggin' jockey.

Tried getting some decent pictures of Jarod, young Tyler Keck (blond son of my blond pal and old school roommate Jason and his wife Tracey [whom I never roomed with]) and Lyla Joy, Jarod's pal since infancy. Kids weren't really into it, though. While I was trying to get the picture of Jarod and Lyla they were both on the verge of meltdown; I told them "We're just pretending to take a picture, there's no film in the camera. Look at the camera but don't smile, this is just pretend."

Nicolette and I may look sleepy but we'd just driven two and a half hours.

My old pal Bruce was wearing a bright yellow shirt, gotta get me one of those, one really stands out in photos. I've know Bruce since 1988, almost 20 years, met at a college bible of Mount Soledad Presbyterian church - it has since reincarnated into two separate churches. One of Bruce's most fascinating qualities is that his existence is such that he doesn't have to work, he just travels around most of the time, goes to see his friends, visits places. I'm going to try to get him to work chez John & Nicole into his rotation once we move out of the Blue House, ramble onto new territory.

You'll see Jason instructing son Tyler regarding the backyard sprinkler head. As I recall, the young guy was fully into sprinklers that day. When I was younger I might have chortled up my sleeve at the idea of a child taking a long-term serious interest in sprinklers. After taking such a long, harrowing time myself to discover something profitable to work at as an adult, you will not ever catch me thusly chortling.

I managed to catch Mom engaged in her hobby of taking out garbage whenever she can get hold of some, whether she's at her own house or anyone else's. If she can see it, it's up for grabs.

Things started winding down eventually somehow. Tracey and Nicole planted themselves on the couch for a while chitchatting. Found Pa out back snoozing.

When you open Jim's Mr. Spock birthday card, you can hear Mr. Spock saying the mystery word "Irritating."