Being Thirty (Part Three)

I did mention that I had one more birthday celebration coming up, didn't I?

My friend-ish party was originally scheduled for last Friday, but I had to reschedule because a) I hadn't time to organise anything, and b) I was really too tired to do it after having worked several early shifts that week. I was knackered...

So, I postponed it until the 12th. Which meant I had ample time to tidy the house and prepare the food. Yeah, right. Have I ever been well organised?
Turns out, I have. I even managed to clean up the kitchen and living room, and prepare some foodstuffs including a lovely little plate of crudités. ie. those little sticks of carrots and celery and cheesy lumps and whatnot.

I only invited a handful of people over for the gathering - basically, the people I used to live with, a couple of friends from high school and one from the mural painting project. I told everyone to show up at around 5pm. Yeah, right.
I had to wait until 5.30 before I could even leave the house to collect one of my friends (who has no personal transport and lives two towns away), and en route the weather decided to break, and dumped a whole bunch o' rain on me - and it was this time that the windscreen wiper decided to stop working properly!
I had to pull over and fix the wipers three times between departure and returning home. GRRR!!! I made sure I fixed this problem before I returned my guest to his place!

But, once I'd come back with friend in tow, I learned two important facts:
1) one of my other friends had shown up in the meantime;
2) we now had a Nintendo Wii! (bought from a friend of a friend for $350!)

So, we ordered pizza, ate snacks, drank fizzy stuff, played a few rounds of Mario Kart: Double Dash for the hell of it, and then tried out some of the WiiSports. Bowling was a hit, as were Golf and a very dangerous game of Baseball (Slink, you really don't have to swing the Wiimote that hard).
While we were playing, two more of my friends showed up a little late, but they stuck around much longer than they expected 'cause we were having so much fun. They had to bring their two kids along as well, but they were both young and very easy to look after. One of them stayed asleep pretty much most of the time anyway - how hard is it to look after a sleeping bub?

And Ma even came over for some birthday cake - another sponge, but this one had flakey chocolate frosting... mmm! Cakey cake, but I'm glad I waited a week before I had another one, because three cakes in one week is seriously pushing your luck, birthday or not.

The only person who couldn't make it (caught that damn flu that's going around) sent me a birthday card with $30 worth of scratch lottery tickets inside. I won $16, which is slightly more than a 50% return (and kinda made me wish they had just given me the cash instead! :D )

We all had a lovely time.
I got to catch up with everybody I'd missed at the other parties, and we all had lots of food and fun, well into the night. Luckily I don't have to do an early shift on Saturday!

And, now that it's all over:

To all of my friends and family who helped
make my 30th Birthday so much damn fun,
I give you all my love and extra special thanks!
And to those who missed out on the action, I offer you...

Enjoy!
And may I hope to see you all at my 31st,
whenever I get around to celebrating it...