Chasing the rooster

Ho, man, what a birthday it was! I'm still trying to adapt to non-island life. As Jake said, when you get back you have a really hard time getting to all the things you have to do, because you've gotten used to not having anything to do. Except lounge around and go to the beach and "chase the rooster."**


People keep asking for the highlights, so here's a few: The birthday itself was one long day of fun. We went snorkeling for the second time, at a beach where these pools were made out of rocks. (Overall, we saw sea turtles, spotted puffer fish, a flounder, a protruding brow fish, and many more. No eels or sharks, alas.) Michele and Kristina made an amazing dinner, followed by Kathleen's super-chocolaty cake.


They presented me with an amazing zine that compiled hilarious comics made by many of my friends. Then, Kathleen and Eric broke out the Bolivian hats and the Bolivian absinthe, and a dance party ensued. And finally, we ran off to the beach and rode the waves in all our drunken glory -- until Chris accidentally squashed Kristina's toe. Talk about the icing on the cake!


Other highlights: Chris brought Not Quite What I Was Planning, the recent collection of six-word memoirs that was inspired by NaNoWriMo, and so we spent much of the week concocting our own. I'll share a couple of mine:

Red Sox fan,
Can die now.

Love the ocean,
Oedipus be damned.

Jumping off the rope swing at this quarry tucked away in the woods was pretty cool, even if Brent ended up kicking himself while jumping off the rocks. Kristina was pissed, because he was stealing her sympathy.


For some reason we're trying to simulate our catwalk tiger look here.


Also, shave ice! Not shaved ice, not sno cones. Shave ice, which is like a sno cone with a lump of ice cream beneath it. We also played a lot of games of Quote Unquote or whatever that thing is that Karen and Thaddeus so nicely lent us. Naturally, with the in-house internets, we spent time googling the quotes in all sorts of other languages and then retranslating them. So the Dutch saying, "the short man has a taller wife" becomes "the midget spares the rod" in the Ukraine. Go figure!

We also hiked the first two miles of the Na Pali Coast, which was rather hellacious. Thank god for the beach at the beginning/end, where you could float with the fishies and buy weed (and mead) from the woman in the white van.


John sent along a new shock game, in which you were administered random shocks if you picked the same number as the computer. Believe me, it's more fun -- or something -- than it sounds.


And we boogie-boarded too!


All good things must come to an end, eventually, so we packed up and flew home, where I decided to shave my week-long growth into as ridiculous a style as I could stand.


**Oh yeah, so "chasing the rooster," which happened usually around 5 a.m. when the wild beasts would start doodle-dooing, came to stand for the act of self-pleasurement. I can't recall exactly why.