I'm Such a Card

There's something to be said for making Trish convulse with laughter. Repeatedly. I'm not sure what it is, but there's something to be said for it.

So Friday I'm at the Apple Beer Bash, and I run into BC, who says, "Was I really lame or did I invite you to my birthday party?" To which I replied, "You did, but I was really lame and never got around to responding. Is that this weekend?" Yep, it was. Saturday, in fact. But Debbi and I went anyway.

BC and his fiancee, Jen (who has the good taste to be a Red Sox fan), have a very nice house in south San Jose. It almost makes me want to move to south San Jose (motto: "It's really flat here"). I shouldn't make fun of it, though; it works for some people, but I learned by living there that the Valley proper is not the place for me. Anyway, the house is very nice. They've also inherited a set of feral cats who hang out around their house. Only Jen really seems to get to pet them, but they seem very friendly otherwise.

Most of BC's friends I don't know. There were a few from Apple, whom I didn't really recognize. And quite a few from his days on the talk.bizarre newsgroup. That said, BC is some sort of Silicon Valley nexus from my point of view. He knows - independently of me - both CJ Silverio, and former gaming buddy Toby (who was at the party with her SO and daughter). Plus he used to work with Trish - Trish says I introduced them, a fact which I barely remember.

Anyway, beyond them Trish shows up with her friend Jen (no relation - I presume - to BC's Jen) and her newish boyfriend Jared (whom I met - and maybe she also met - at Journalcon).

And the silliness began.

First of all, well, there's this thing I know about Trish which Jared doesn't know. Which is, like a very evil thing to know. Oooh, an excellent torture opportunity. Somehow in the midst of all this Trish ended up saying something like, "I kick your ass." I put up my dukes and said, "Bring it on!" At which point Trish completely lost it. Something about the incongruity of my voice and that phrase. Or something.

I pushed her over the edge again later on when we were talking about the cats. I'd been trying to entice them to let me pet them all afternoon, but without success. Debbi and Trish were giving me (just a little) crap about this (usually I'm good at luring cats to me), when I said, "I'm just chasing a little tail." Jared - who I think was getting used to all of us wackos by this point - grunted something like, "Oh, yeah," and Trish snorted and was laughing her ass off again.

See? There's something to be said for that.

There's also something to be said for extreme geek humor. One fellow came up to introduce himself to myself, Debbi, and Jared. Then he said that he wasn't too good with char-stars, that he can barely handle strings. So if her comes up to one of us waving his finger... and I said, "Then you're referring to us by our pointer!" He rolled his eyes and said that was a really geeky joke, and Jared said, "Well, I got it."

I figure one reader in ten will get that joke. Especially since it was probably a "you hadda be there" joke.

BC and Jen threw a good party. Good munchies, and some tasty barbecue from a nearby hole-in-the-wall. It was a nice day, not too warm, and there was some good conversation. We gave them a bottle of good orange muscat we discovered recently, since BC downplayed the bringing of gifts the way I always do at my birthday parties. And then we excused ourselves to go home and digest for the evening.

After all, we'd had barbecue for dinner on Friday night, too...