Interesting weekend. The fourth was spent with Mara at two cookouts. The first, was at her friend Alistair's house in Medford, about a mile from my apartment. We only stayed a couple of hours and the experience can be summed up thusly:
1. Mara and I were the only couple there without a baby. That in itself wasn't so bad---I wasn't feeling like I was missing out or anything---but pretty much every single conversation was centered around....wait for it!--- that's right, babies. I didn't care a wit about any of it and contented myself to eating from the great spread that adorned the dining room table. Fuckin' babies.
2. There were two instances of comedy that occurred. The first began as a loud buzzing sound coming from one of the neighbor's houses. It sounded like someone was using a weed whacker. After hearing it for a while, I decided it was someone's bug zapper. An older gentleman, one who figures prominently in the second bit of comedy, revealed to everyone that Alistair's neighbor, wearing a pair of noise canceling headphones, was cutting someone's hair with a pair of electric trimmers. We thought he was joking at first, but when I looked over the fence I saw that he was correct. It doesn't sound very funny as I recount it, but I guess I found it to be particularly amusing because of the headphones and the excessive volume. Anyway.....
The second bit of comedy occurred at the dining room table, where Mara and I were sitting eating some burgers. The older guy I just told you about came over and started preparing a burger for himself and when he went to add some mustard, the top came off and a heap of it covered his bun. Mara and I both laughed at his plight and assisted in the clean up. Once the excess mustard was cleared, he added some ketchup to the burger. And, damnit, didn't he, add the same amount of ketchup purposefully as he did accidentally with the mustard. If only the ketchup bottle had the loose top, he wouldn't have had to clean up shit. Anyhow, it was funny to watch, even if it doesn't translate here very well.
That was about it for that cookout. Grade: C-.
When we got to Nashua for Mike's cookout, we hit a shitload of traffic by Holman stadium. Fireworks. Damnit! Bad timing. When we finally got to Mike's, I discovered that Tracy and Ray, two friends I was looking forward to seeing, had just left. And, as I was greeting Janelle, she was saying goodbye, though she was planning on coming back at some point.
It was kind of strange, this cookout. There were a good amount of people I didn't know, and the ones I did know, were scattered about. That made it tough to socialize. Things took on a surreal quality later on in the evening when the yard, as a result of people lighting fireworks, took on a hazy, smoky, Apocalypse Now look.
There were periods when it was just me and Mara sitting there watching the wraiths of friends and strangers come and go. We decided to leave earlier than I thought we would. As much as I had yearned to be around friends that night, it just wasn't happening. Still, though, I was glad for the time I did have with people like Mike, Mark and Becky, Amy, Luke Warm, and Kreg.
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Yesterday was my birthday. I went to my parent's in the morning. My dad arrived a few minutes after I did (he had stayed the night at my grandmother's house, which is part of a big ordeal I'll cover in a future post) and after a few minutes of socializing, he told my mother and me that he wasn't going to go out to lunch with us. My mother tried to get him to come, but he wouldn't budge. He looked tired and frayed. I told my mother I'd be happy to go out with only her and that's what we did. We went to Bertucci's and had a nice lunch. When we got back to the house, we discovered that my dad had gone to bed. My mom sang happy birthday to me and I blew out the candles on the cake she presented to me. I could tell she felt bad about everything.
Mara and I went to the Decordova museum in the afternoon---great time---and came back to my house afterwards. We had been snacking all day on the delicious banana bread she had mad me. When we got back to the house, she made us a delicious meal of pan-seared scallops over fresh pasta with a side of asparagus. Amazing!
After dinner, we watched In Bruges, a great movie that everyone should see. It starred Brendan Gleason (one of my favorite actors) and Colin Farrell, in one of his best performances. The film was about two hit men (Gleason and Farrell) on the lamb in Bruges, Belgium. Every step of the way, the film avoided Hollywood cliches. What a moving, funny, intelligent, well-acted piece of work. A rare find. See this film.
Mara had brought over a dvd of Gilligan's Island that she had got from Netflix, and we watched a few episodes in bed. Hadn't seen the show in a while and when Ginger made her first appearance, I explained to Mara how she was my first sexual crush. And, judging by the change in my body temperature every time I saw her, she still does it for me. Damn, if I was stranded on that island with her, I wouldn't even entertain the idea of trying to get rescued.
Earlier in the week, Mara was concerned she wouldn't have much alone time with me on my birthday. I had told her that there was a pretty good chance one or two of my friends might want to take me out to dinner or something to celebrate. And if that was the case, I wanted to make myself available. Well, she didn't have to worry because no one called me. Fuck it---I enjoyed myself anyway.
Today, I bought myself a few cd's as a birthday present to myself. When I saw that the holy grail of out of print records, Dennis Wilson's Pacific Ocean Blue, had finally been released on cd, I almost fainted. Well, that's not true, but I was pretty excited, especially when I saw that his second, unreleased album, Bamboo, was part of the package. I also picked up Soundheim's Sweeney Todd and Iron and Wine's Our Endless Numbered Days, a disc I once owned but had been stolen from my car.
Tonight I'm going to relax, or at least try to. I'm really digging the Wilson album and, if I have time, I may watch Bergman's Wild Strawberries. Ciao, bitches.
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