joe's birthday 2013
it started friday night. since sic737 couldn't attend saturday's festivities, he took joe (& me!) out to eat at lark. savvy readers will remember that's where joe & i spent our fourth anniversary, & chris had never been.
lark is only about a mile away, & just one turn from our apartment, but i was determined to surprise joe. & this was no easy task considering my mountain boy's ridiculously keen sense of direction. so i put him in my car & blindfolded him, then drove all the fuck over creation, taking left turns at road turtles & driving away from our destination half the time, until he thought we were in fremont or west seattle! success! i then had him walk blindfolded for two blocks to the restaurant so he'd be completely confused as to where we were. i then made him identify chris by feel alone - this should've been easy since chris is currently the only one of our friends with a mohawk... but joe ID'd him based on the firmness of his hug, which was adorable.
we three shared lark's sautéed half wild mushrooms (with garlic, olive oil, & sea salt); the salmon special (peas, corn, fingerling potatoes, & shaved black truffle); the pork special: crispy pork shoulder pavé (chicken egg on top, & a ragout of baby carrots, chantrelles, & spring onions); their double lamb chop & lamb sausage (fingerling potatoes, ramps, nicoise olive salad); roasted eel with saba (& new potato salad); & carpaccio of yellowtail (with preserved lemon & green olives). then chris left joe & i to split the black plum tarte tatin (with rum caramel & vanilla bean ice cream). SO fucking good.
after, chris wanted to ride home in my miata's trunk for the lulz, but he couldn't fit. i came close, but i couldn't fit either - my hips are about an inch too wide. you never realize how big you are until you try to fit in a miata trunk, truly. anyhow, somehow chris WAS able to climb onto joe's lap - WITH joe's sprained ankle in a giant walking cast - & ride home a couple miles that way! i turned off the airbag, thankfully avoided being pulled over, & got everyone home safely.
saturday morning, i woke joe at nine (sorry, no pics of how i woke him :D) & took him down to our apartment lobby. i "forgot" to use the bathroom & get my camera, so i left him there & ran back upstairs. while there, i set up some things...
i'd wanted to blindfold him again, but it was cruel enough doing that for two blocks yesterday considering the walking cast, so i just let him walk with me. (on the upside, this was the morning that the swelling decreased significantly, so that helped.) we arrived in short order at glo's, & were greeted by aidan, cooper & gwen, deherrch & his girlfriend, sheeep & mika, & liquordrums & nessa & their fuck proof. hugs all around & joe was happy!
now, glo's is a tiny little breakfast spot, with maybe ten tables, & it's always packed. when you want to eat at glo's, you accept in advance that there's going to be at least an hour's wait until you get a table, often two, then 30-40 minutes before you receive food... & it's so worth it. what surprised me was that they were even willing to do a breakfast party! i got it sorted weeks ago with the general manager, & she was stoked that we love glo's enough to try this. since the rest of the day was on a flexible time table, & i didn't care if we were all served at the same time so long as we could generally be together, we made it work.
after breakfast, seven of us continued back to the apartment. in the lobby, i handed joe a piece of paper with a blue sharpie drawing on it... okay, this is going to take some explanation. so, castlevania's "symphony of the night" has always been joe's favorite game, & i love it, too. it's some 20 years old, but we still play it at least every other month. joe knows this game inside & out. the japanese version, only released for the sega saturn, actually has two extra levels - not just screens, whole levels - PLUS the ability to play as 2 additional characters. we'd tried to find a ROM ages ago, but couldn't get it to play. so, i enlisted testing4l to help me locate & vet a saturn console, a game genie for imports, & the game itself, & we put it together. the blue sharpie drawing was of the lapis luzuli relic, which brings luck to the player. i handed it to joe & told him he'll need luck to figure out this puzzle...
so we traipsed up to the apartment, & he found another sharpie drawing on the front door - the jewel of open (a gem that allows the player through "sealed" doors), & then spotted a paper on the closed bathroom door indicating it was thus "sealed". joe opened the door, & on the countertop was a lumpy package with a jump stone drawn on it (lets the player double jump). i noted the next item may be up high! on the bookshelf in the living room sat a small box with a sharpie'd demon card (gives a little demon familiar/helper guy), & on the back was a picture i'd drawn of the demon familiar himself. next came the button on the closed bedroom door - in game, the demon familiar is required to push this button, & i ran over to my computer to play the associated & unmistakable .wav file for this event. once through the bedroom door, he saw a package sitting on the bed covered in paper printed with a stone wall. he "broke" this wall, & beneath was a package wrapped in brown paper to resemble a turkey (a health item, often found by breaking hidden walls). & then i had him locate one more item in the room, which he found in his sock drawer - a dagger (his favorite "special" weapon).
(sorry, forgot to photograph the jewel of open & how the bathroom door was magically sealed, & i didn't screencap the "press it & see" button from youtube.)
back in the living room with his four packages, we called phil, then i dictated the order of opening: the jump stone held the a/v & power cables for the saturn console; the demon card became a game genie (needed to play imports); the turkey itself was the game system (console as the body, the controller wires wrapped into wings, & the controllers for legs, with little legbones fashioned out of paper); & the dagger was the game itself - still in the original plastic. phil told him a bit about how we worked this out, including that he'd put his return address as "john cassini" (google "giovanni cassini" if you don't catch the reference) when mailing me the system, in case joe spotted the package.
after the presents were unwrapped, we moved on to cake. i'd collected money from his friends & ordered a beautiful red velvet cake from macrina bakery - same place joe bought my latest birthday cake - & deherrch had sneaked out after breakfast & picked it up for us. cooper had the best suggestion for what to write on it...
we ate cake, i set up the saturn, & we played for hours as people slowly took their leave. aidan hung in the longest, & split around the three hour mark. joe & i kept playing the entire rest of the day, trying to finish the regular castle in one sitting. we found TONS of differences between the japanese & US versions - far more than noted online, down to slight differences in tone of weapon sounds, echoes in hallways versus rooms, five-layer moving backgrounds, & tiny skulls placed as detritus in transporter rooms.
it's a good thing that there wasn't any hiking involved this year, since joe's messed up ankle needs at least another week to heal, & it's also good i chose a breakfast birthday party so we could keep playing castlevania all day. :) i'll probably take him to dinner on his actual birthday on the 31st, too, but nothing more is in the works this year. edit: okay, so a LITTLE more was in the works. i surprised joe with breakfast in bed on his actual birthday - a toasted english muffin holding egg, salami, tomato, & some kind of horrible cheese, a favorite of his; i got up early on a work day to make it - & indeed took him out to dinner. we feasted at marrakesh, where we've feasted many times before. the owner, who loves us, came over to give us free drinks (mango juice hghhalghla), & the servers brought joe an extra dessert of baklava while singing. A+ stuffed bellies, would stuff again.
also i learned to make coffee for him, which is something i've never done in 30+ years of existence.
as always, i'll link joe's write-up here (if he ever does so!) when it's ready. happy birthday, baby. :)
next up: ireland?@#?!?$%!? holy crap, we have to pack
lark is only about a mile away, & just one turn from our apartment, but i was determined to surprise joe. & this was no easy task considering my mountain boy's ridiculously keen sense of direction. so i put him in my car & blindfolded him, then drove all the fuck over creation, taking left turns at road turtles & driving away from our destination half the time, until he thought we were in fremont or west seattle! success! i then had him walk blindfolded for two blocks to the restaurant so he'd be completely confused as to where we were. i then made him identify chris by feel alone - this should've been easy since chris is currently the only one of our friends with a mohawk... but joe ID'd him based on the firmness of his hug, which was adorable.
we three shared lark's sautéed half wild mushrooms (with garlic, olive oil, & sea salt); the salmon special (peas, corn, fingerling potatoes, & shaved black truffle); the pork special: crispy pork shoulder pavé (chicken egg on top, & a ragout of baby carrots, chantrelles, & spring onions); their double lamb chop & lamb sausage (fingerling potatoes, ramps, nicoise olive salad); roasted eel with saba (& new potato salad); & carpaccio of yellowtail (with preserved lemon & green olives). then chris left joe & i to split the black plum tarte tatin (with rum caramel & vanilla bean ice cream). SO fucking good.
after, chris wanted to ride home in my miata's trunk for the lulz, but he couldn't fit. i came close, but i couldn't fit either - my hips are about an inch too wide. you never realize how big you are until you try to fit in a miata trunk, truly. anyhow, somehow chris WAS able to climb onto joe's lap - WITH joe's sprained ankle in a giant walking cast - & ride home a couple miles that way! i turned off the airbag, thankfully avoided being pulled over, & got everyone home safely.
saturday morning, i woke joe at nine (sorry, no pics of how i woke him :D) & took him down to our apartment lobby. i "forgot" to use the bathroom & get my camera, so i left him there & ran back upstairs. while there, i set up some things...
i'd wanted to blindfold him again, but it was cruel enough doing that for two blocks yesterday considering the walking cast, so i just let him walk with me. (on the upside, this was the morning that the swelling decreased significantly, so that helped.) we arrived in short order at glo's, & were greeted by aidan, cooper & gwen, deherrch & his girlfriend, sheeep & mika, & liquordrums & nessa & their fuck proof. hugs all around & joe was happy!
now, glo's is a tiny little breakfast spot, with maybe ten tables, & it's always packed. when you want to eat at glo's, you accept in advance that there's going to be at least an hour's wait until you get a table, often two, then 30-40 minutes before you receive food... & it's so worth it. what surprised me was that they were even willing to do a breakfast party! i got it sorted weeks ago with the general manager, & she was stoked that we love glo's enough to try this. since the rest of the day was on a flexible time table, & i didn't care if we were all served at the same time so long as we could generally be together, we made it work.
after breakfast, seven of us continued back to the apartment. in the lobby, i handed joe a piece of paper with a blue sharpie drawing on it... okay, this is going to take some explanation. so, castlevania's "symphony of the night" has always been joe's favorite game, & i love it, too. it's some 20 years old, but we still play it at least every other month. joe knows this game inside & out. the japanese version, only released for the sega saturn, actually has two extra levels - not just screens, whole levels - PLUS the ability to play as 2 additional characters. we'd tried to find a ROM ages ago, but couldn't get it to play. so, i enlisted testing4l to help me locate & vet a saturn console, a game genie for imports, & the game itself, & we put it together. the blue sharpie drawing was of the lapis luzuli relic, which brings luck to the player. i handed it to joe & told him he'll need luck to figure out this puzzle...
so we traipsed up to the apartment, & he found another sharpie drawing on the front door - the jewel of open (a gem that allows the player through "sealed" doors), & then spotted a paper on the closed bathroom door indicating it was thus "sealed". joe opened the door, & on the countertop was a lumpy package with a jump stone drawn on it (lets the player double jump). i noted the next item may be up high! on the bookshelf in the living room sat a small box with a sharpie'd demon card (gives a little demon familiar/helper guy), & on the back was a picture i'd drawn of the demon familiar himself. next came the button on the closed bedroom door - in game, the demon familiar is required to push this button, & i ran over to my computer to play the associated & unmistakable .wav file for this event. once through the bedroom door, he saw a package sitting on the bed covered in paper printed with a stone wall. he "broke" this wall, & beneath was a package wrapped in brown paper to resemble a turkey (a health item, often found by breaking hidden walls). & then i had him locate one more item in the room, which he found in his sock drawer - a dagger (his favorite "special" weapon).
(sorry, forgot to photograph the jewel of open & how the bathroom door was magically sealed, & i didn't screencap the "press it & see" button from youtube.)
back in the living room with his four packages, we called phil, then i dictated the order of opening: the jump stone held the a/v & power cables for the saturn console; the demon card became a game genie (needed to play imports); the turkey itself was the game system (console as the body, the controller wires wrapped into wings, & the controllers for legs, with little legbones fashioned out of paper); & the dagger was the game itself - still in the original plastic. phil told him a bit about how we worked this out, including that he'd put his return address as "john cassini" (google "giovanni cassini" if you don't catch the reference) when mailing me the system, in case joe spotted the package.
after the presents were unwrapped, we moved on to cake. i'd collected money from his friends & ordered a beautiful red velvet cake from macrina bakery - same place joe bought my latest birthday cake - & deherrch had sneaked out after breakfast & picked it up for us. cooper had the best suggestion for what to write on it...
we ate cake, i set up the saturn, & we played for hours as people slowly took their leave. aidan hung in the longest, & split around the three hour mark. joe & i kept playing the entire rest of the day, trying to finish the regular castle in one sitting. we found TONS of differences between the japanese & US versions - far more than noted online, down to slight differences in tone of weapon sounds, echoes in hallways versus rooms, five-layer moving backgrounds, & tiny skulls placed as detritus in transporter rooms.
it's a good thing that there wasn't any hiking involved this year, since joe's messed up ankle needs at least another week to heal, & it's also good i chose a breakfast birthday party so we could keep playing castlevania all day. :) i'll probably take him to dinner on his actual birthday on the 31st, too, but nothing more is in the works this year. edit: okay, so a LITTLE more was in the works. i surprised joe with breakfast in bed on his actual birthday - a toasted english muffin holding egg, salami, tomato, & some kind of horrible cheese, a favorite of his; i got up early on a work day to make it - & indeed took him out to dinner. we feasted at marrakesh, where we've feasted many times before. the owner, who loves us, came over to give us free drinks (mango juice hghhalghla), & the servers brought joe an extra dessert of baklava while singing. A+ stuffed bellies, would stuff again.
also i learned to make coffee for him, which is something i've never done in 30+ years of existence.
as always, i'll link joe's write-up here (if he ever does so!) when it's ready. happy birthday, baby. :)
next up: ireland?@#?!?$%!? holy crap, we have to pack