Last night was prom. My date was the self-proclaimed Worst Prom Date Ever, which is to say, the organizer, and not really the worst prom date ever (unless you include the abandoning in the middle of prom, the pizza dinner, the forced labor and the sour towel, then maybe). Actually, I'm exaggerating for effect, Roshan did get me a beautiful red rose corsage (passion!), and really wasn't the worst date ever: he left me for his girlfriend (reasonable, considering I was forewarned), the pizza dinner was very tasty, the decorating committee needed the extra two sets of hands and the towel was presumably clean.

I showed up late at his house, the truck having recently gone out in the Great Grand Birthday Sandbox Adventure with Mike for Liza. We dashed off to get a keg, then another keg, and another one. If you ever decide to purchase a keg from a microbrewery, standing at the back gate, rattling it, howling at the top of your lungs, "WHERE IS MY KEG!?" won't endear yourself to the staff. Neither will trying to crack their combination lock. Even if you've already paid for said keg.

The combo is 0351, by the way.

We dashed off to Mitchell Park after stopping by Roshan's house to pick up the rest of the alcohol. I had two awesome cookies, baked by Roshan's housemate, Matt, who was his high school prom king (and, well, looked the part). We arrived first at the community center, and started unpacking the alcohol into the mini-gym/dance floor/hall. As we were finishing up, the decorating committee arrived: Joy, Lisa, Eric, and three others.

The decorations were blue cellophane sheets hung all around the walls, with hand crafted fish, lights and streamers. The fish were amazing. Personally, I would have drawn one of the fish, colored it, taken it to Kinko's, made fifty copies, then cut them out. Instead, Lisa cut out and glued each color out of construction paper, and these things were seriously detailed. Incredibly impressive.

We had arrived early to give the band cashola and spent a little time talking to one of the band members. She was reviewing the lyrics of the songs I think Roshan had asked them to play. She looked at me and said, "I've never heard of half these songs." I chuckled at the time, and later realized, when she was singing back up to the songs, that, well, she hadn't know half the songs because she was in kindergarten when they were first released. I, on the other hand, was in high school. Punk kid.

People started trickling in at 9, when prom was supposed to start. Roshan commented he really needed to tell people 8, since no one showed up until 9:45 anyway. A friend of Roshan's showed up on time, and so spent some time talking to me. My teammate Adam showed up soon after, with his date. When he realized no one had really shown up yet, he left. I turned to AJ, the guy I was talking to, and said, "Yeah, his real prom was about 3 weeks ago." AJ responded, "Heh. I guess this prom isn't much of a novelty for him then." "Yeah, unlike us whose prom was over a decade ago."

He turned to look at me, shocked. "Over a decade?"

I didn't have the heart to tell him, yeah, actually closer to two decades.

Eventually, Kris and Katie (yay, a date for my husband!) showed up, with Doyle and Heather. Doyle spent what seemed like the first hour on his cell phone with Brynne, who was saying crazy stuff, almost giving him permission to make out with Heather, or something like that. I think Brynne was drunk. Warren, Jess, Jess, Beth, Forker!, Paul, Shwu! and other teammates and friends starting showing up, which made the evening much better, my date Roshan being off playing host and spending time with his other date. She didn't seem to appreciate my presence, refusing to dance with me. Which entertained me to no end, with her being the "other woman" from my perspective.

Around midnight, I took off the 3" strappy heels Heather loaned me to go with the amazing dress she loaned me. It took me that long to realize that 1. I can't walk in 3" heels, no matter how much I like to pretend I'm a girl, and 2. 3" heels do not help an injured knee.

Katie sat next to me while I rested my feet, and we talked for a bit (where talking amounted to screaming at each other over the music). At one point, she yelled over to me, "Whatever you do, don't look to your left."

Which caused me to look to my left immediately.

And catch a woman with her head buried into the crotch of the guy standing in front of her, his belt undone, and his pants unzipped.

I immediately turned back to Katie, "Aaauuugh!" She laughed. The couple spent the next hour in some sort of connected body contortions. We were able to catch a picture of the two of them only after they had sufficiently untangled themselves. Good times.

All in all, a fun night. Strangely enough, the amount of alcohol consumed per pound of flesh at this Prom was remarkably similar to the amount of alcohol comsumed per pound of flesh at my high school prom. About 60 bottles of wine and maybe 20 glasses of beer were consumed by about 120, maybe 140 people.

Yeah, that's about right.

My Flickr photos of Prom || My Gallery photos of Prom

Or what I wish someone had taught my date in high school.

If ever on a date, say, a prom date, and stressed because the truck to get the kegs showed up late, and the decorations are supposed to start going up at six, but there's no one at the gym at six, so you're really busy setting up the gym, and, say, your date says something like, "Oh, no! I've lost my N!" (assuming, of course, N is something physical that you can help your date find, and not something intangible, like, say, your date's virginity, this being prom and all), the proper response is not, "Oh, that's too bad."

The proper response is some variation of, "Oh no! I'm really stressed right now, helping set up this whole prom/party, but I want to help you find your N. I'll come help as soon as I'm able."

Your date will be much happier, and less annoyed at you.

Later in the evening, after the decorations have gone up, the band is ready, and people are arriving, and you're greeting all the newcomers individually, because you can, there are so few, if your date is next to you during the greetings, definitely do introductions. When said introductions are over, do not continue the conversation with your guests by turning your back on your date. The first time you do this, it's an accident. The fifth time, it's bad manners.

If necessary, place your hand on your date's hip. The placement will force you to be turned slightly towards your date, and to include your date in conversations.

That said, prom was on Saturday night.

A couple days ago, yeah, the one where I was home all day sick, so that would be Wednesday, Heather came home early from work. Thus far, when she's come home from work having not eaten, if there aren't known leftovers in the fridge, she'll stop by some place and pick up lunch. As she did on Wednesday.

So, she arrived home, said hello, puttered in the kitchen, then came out to the living room, where I sat with migraine fairies sprinkling headache dust all over me, the dogs lying on the couch next to me. She jumped on her computer and started typing away. After a few minutes, we heard a little bang!

Hmph. The fairies moved to the kitchen.

Heather looked up, then around. I thought little of the sound.

Twenty seconds later, we heard a louder, most insistent bang!. "What was that?" Heather asked.

"It's the toaster oven. Something's just settling in the oven."

"The toaster oven?" she asked, dubiously. She stood up, eyeing me carefully, possibly seeing me pull one of the fairies out of my hair and throw it against the window, and walked into the kitchen.

"Oh my gosh."

I turned to look at Heather, who was standing in the kitchen door.

She rushed forward. "Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!"

The fairy I was in the process of crushing momentarily forgotten, I stood up and hurried into the kitchen. Heather was near the toaster oven, trying to figure out what to do. The dogs ran in behind me, howling. "You're supposed to howl before it catches on fire!" she yelled to the dogs, the room a dark yellow glow from the smoke billowing from the toaster oven.

I hurried over and looked over her shoulder. By opening the toaster oven door, Heather had put out most of the flames. Enough for me to see the source of the flames was the paper wrapping around a burger she was heating up in the toaster oven. "How are we going to get it out?" she asked, looking at the smoldering lump of her lunch.

"Eh, tongs," I answered, pulling a set out from the door next to me, and reaching in and pulling the burning ember out.

I set it down and hurried away, as she picked up the burger with the tongs. Three seconds later, I was hovering over her shoulder, camera in hand.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Documenting the best roomie ever. Today was a crappy day. This is making the blog."

Note to self: if you set the timer, don't forget to turn it on. Otherwise, you may end up with burnt scones.

If you do burn said scones, it helps to have a husband who will eat those scones anyway.

Or a dog.

So, Mike's been getting a number of odd calls to his home number. The message was always something like, "This is mumble, calling from mumble-mumble. It's really important you call me back right away. My number is 702-something-something-something-you-get-the-point."

After receiving three of these calls in the last two days, he called the number. Sure, the first one is a missed call. But three of them? Something was up. He called from work, with Doyle and I sitting in the office, not really listening at first.

"I'd like to know why you keep calling me."

"What's the nature of your business? Why do you keep leaving messages on my voicemail?"

"What do you do? Where are you located? Why do you keep calling my house?"

"I'm not going to tell you that information. You are the one calling me, remember?"

"Look, yes, I know where you're calling from. You're calling from [the 702 number]. Is this a sales call? pause Look, I receive a lot of sales calls, and I'm not interested in receiving them. If you're calling about..."

He was cut off by a very loud, "Mide yo oh-OHN bidness!"

Momentary shocked, Mike looked up at me. Then at Doyle.

We started laughing. Mike recovered quickly.

"Let me speak to your manager. No. Your manager. Right. Now."

I don't know how Mike does it. I'd be cursing up a storm at that idiot woman about 10 seconds into the converation. "What the ****? Look you, *****! You're the one ****ing calling me! Cut this **** out or I'm ****ing calling the police on you for harassment."

Instead, he calmly found out from the manager that the company is a collections agency with the wrong phone number. If they had bothered to do a reverse lookup on Mike's number, they would see Mike has had the same number for the last 8 years, an no, the name on that number was not Jesse Beach.

Yeah, Mike's approach.

Way better.

Stupid woman.