party season

I’ve been getting out a bit more this month. It started with the awesome Fresh Pot Five Year Anniversary Party held in the ballroom below my apartment. OMG. It was SO. FUN. Quasi played. QUASI!! aka probably my favorite Portland band. I mean, just look at Janet pound those drums:

She is a machine.
It was neat because a lot of my old college friends were there- all the dudes I worked with at the radio station, plus some homies from the dorms that I never see anymore. Someone made the great call that it was like Sunburn- the big campus concert we organized every year. I don’t know if it was being surrounded by old friends, or the fact that Quasi (who probably peaked in the year 2000) played, or because I was solidly drunk, but for the first time since I started teaching I felt like I was my own age or younger. Usually I feel a good 15 to 25 years older than I am. Anyway, I kept telling my friend Matt that I was the happiest I had been in “over a year.” And even now, two weeks later and sober, I think it’s true.
A week later I celebrated my birthday- first at school and then at Vendeta, the bar down the street. I was totally exhausted because the Penguin Open House was the night before, which meant I stayed at school for 13 hours organizing life-sized painted penguins and setting up the ocean temperature expiriment.
A quick word about Penguin Open Houses, or any other classroom event: Don’t come early. If it starts at 6:30 don’t come at 6. The teacher won’t be all the way set up and anyway, maybe she wants to eat a little snack and call her boyfriend right before the event is supposed to begin. If you come 30 minutes early she will secretly hate you for the next two weeks. You don’t want that, and neither does she. So be on time, or a little late. Thank you.
Anyway, on the day of my birth I was beat. But my kids were PUMPED UP. They made me many many cards:

And two boys teamed up to make me a crown:

The whole class kept asking if I was “looking forward to the dance party” that they were throwing me. I was like, “Listen dudes. I don’t know how you are going to swing this dance party, since I’m the one who makes the schedule around here.” But they wore me down and for the last 20 minutes of the day we had a wicked cool dance zone.
Later I went to an super nice dinner with Steve and Mike, and then over to Vendetta for drinking with friends. Birthdays are fun!

The next week brought more parties- Jac’s sweet B-Day bash plus a great show at Holocene. I feel like I’m thawing the fuck out. It’s awesome.