Surprise Surprise Surprise

Somehow I got all the way to Wednesday without talking about garething's surprise birthday party. I blame hangovers and politics.

stephtopia wanted to do something for G's birthday and hit upon a surprise party. Naturally she couldn't pull off such a thing at her flat, so she dragged me into the conspiracy. We would hold it here in Pepperland, we would (surreptitiously) invite all of Gareth's friends and then come up with some pretext to get him over here. This would not be hard since a simple "Come over, I want to show you something" would work.

The big snag though was that his birthday is November 7th. Archery is that day. The 8th would be the best time to do it, except Beothuk and Wilma's wedding is that day and we've all been invited. So we decided to hold it on the 1st.

I spent a good part of the week earlier and the day of the party cleaning up the house. This all was part of my current "get rid of clutter" plan - it just forced me to actually do some of it. Plus I got Steph to help.

The party was set to start at 7, but I had to fetch Gareth at 5:30, allegedly to go to the Sentry Box. This we did, and then I had an hour to kill with him in the car. I had two things working for me here: First, Gareth is an innocent trusting soul. Second, I'm a sneaky SOB with well-developed bullshitting skills.

I proceed to drag him all over the city under the pretext of "I need to grab this one thing and it's just a short drive away". All of the places I went to were closed of course, but they did get me close enough to another part of town to repeat the ruse. Then luck struck:

"I'm getting hungry and Steph's out with the hens tonight."
"Well, I've got some chili on the slow-cooker. It smells really good and you're welcome to share."
"Sounds good."

In fact, I did have some chili on the slow-cooker (for the party). but this was an excellent excuse to get him back to my place without arguing against dropping him off at his flat.

We get back to the house (with a short layover at his flat because he wanted to make sure Steph hadn't gone home and felt lonely without him - awwww) and he walks up the stares into a big crowd of people shouting SURPRISE.

We then had a big damn party that went into the wee hours. It had far too much food, but made up for that failing with plenty of good will, fun and camaraderie.

Anyway, if you couldn't make it, wish him a happy birthday sometime before Friday.

Hookie!

Don't forget about hookie tomorrow!

If you're attending the show, pick up your ticket at the Lunchbox Theatre around 12.

If you're coming out for lunch, be at Bookers BBQ & Crab Shack around 1:30.