weekend
Pretty cool weekend.
Saturday
Ananda's graduation party was pretty damn awesome.
There was a little program first. Liz and I performed Queen's Under Pressure and The Beatles' When I'm 64. It sucks when you sound awesome when you practice and screw up for the actual performance, but hey, I guess it happens. I thought Under Pressure when well enough, but we screwed up When I'm 64 a bit. It was fun to play with my "good" amp though... I've never performed with my baby before but I figured it was a special occasion.
All the performances were pretty cool - the highlights were probably the 12-year-old playing "the instrument of the Gods" (i.e. a hand drum with two sides that sounded so damn awesome and had me grooving) and a Bollywood dance sequence that was pretty intense! Susan was a killer MC too.
Then (as some of us knew was going to happen), the party transformed into an engagement party for Ananda and Susan! Good food, good drink, fun dancing, good times. I was honoured to be asked to be in the wedding party, and I'm very excited about that!
This was the only time other than my wedding that there was some significant Bengali friend-"white" friend group mixing, and I think more of it needs to happen. It made for a great time to see everyone all at once.
Sunday
I didn't really care to test in Iai-do on Sunday, but I also didn't want to wait until September when I may do my brown belt test for karate. So I sucked it up and tested and received my orange belt in Iai-do (i.e. samurai sword) Sunday morning.
Liz accidentally volunteered to make sweet potato fries for a dinner we were invited to that night. She spent her day in the kitchen making an obscene amount of them.
Andrew and I chilled with her for a bit, and then went downstairs to catch up on some South Park in our once-again-functional basement. We were catching up on 12th season stuff, and man, is that show ever good!
Dinner at Mike and Anita's was pretty rad. Mike made ribs, and they were delicious. We had from-scratch caesar salad too, with lettuce from Liz's garden (I don't say "our" 'cause I don't do any work on it), and dressing made by Anita with some freshly cooked bacon. The fries turned out awesome too, even if Liz made so many that people ate a ton of them and we still have 2/3 left.
We watched some Mad Men back at our place after and that was that.
Monday
Day off! Liz woke me up rambling about a barbeque or something. I looked at her skeptically, so she went and did research for a while, then got me up. We went to Home Depot and they had a perfectly awesome looking barbeque for $200. Sold. Unfortunately, we didn't consider the possibility that the box wouldn't fit in our car. After we determined that no friend or family member had a minivan handy to help us move it, we emptied our trunk into our back seat and took the BBQ out of the box and put it in the trunk.
We also had adventures relating to trying to find an Air Conditioner. We determined Home Depot was the best place, even though we mostly ran out of gift certificates. It'll cost about $400 for a 10k BTU. Hopefully that does the trick in our little house.
Over the course of the AC adventures, we were near Staples, so went in to buy printer ink and found Prismacolors! The holy grail of pencil crayons! Both Liz and I had always been stuck with crappy Laurentians as children, so our eyes lit up when we saw the 60-pack.
Now, when we were kids, these things seemed prohibitively expensive. In our heads, these things cost $80 or something ridiculous like that. They were $23. Were we really that hung up about $23 as children? We must have had a very different conception of value-for-money than, say, my little brother who things $150 on a hoodie is reasonable. I'd debate for a month whether or not to ask my parents to buy me a CD, which cost about $20 at the time.
Anyway, we got the Prismacolors!
We later put together the barbeque, had Andrew over for pie, had a little colouring party, then watched some How I Met Your Mother. Good end to a fun day.
Saturday
Ananda's graduation party was pretty damn awesome.
There was a little program first. Liz and I performed Queen's Under Pressure and The Beatles' When I'm 64. It sucks when you sound awesome when you practice and screw up for the actual performance, but hey, I guess it happens. I thought Under Pressure when well enough, but we screwed up When I'm 64 a bit. It was fun to play with my "good" amp though... I've never performed with my baby before but I figured it was a special occasion.
All the performances were pretty cool - the highlights were probably the 12-year-old playing "the instrument of the Gods" (i.e. a hand drum with two sides that sounded so damn awesome and had me grooving) and a Bollywood dance sequence that was pretty intense! Susan was a killer MC too.
Then (as some of us knew was going to happen), the party transformed into an engagement party for Ananda and Susan! Good food, good drink, fun dancing, good times. I was honoured to be asked to be in the wedding party, and I'm very excited about that!
This was the only time other than my wedding that there was some significant Bengali friend-"white" friend group mixing, and I think more of it needs to happen. It made for a great time to see everyone all at once.
Sunday
I didn't really care to test in Iai-do on Sunday, but I also didn't want to wait until September when I may do my brown belt test for karate. So I sucked it up and tested and received my orange belt in Iai-do (i.e. samurai sword) Sunday morning.
Liz accidentally volunteered to make sweet potato fries for a dinner we were invited to that night. She spent her day in the kitchen making an obscene amount of them.
Andrew and I chilled with her for a bit, and then went downstairs to catch up on some South Park in our once-again-functional basement. We were catching up on 12th season stuff, and man, is that show ever good!
Dinner at Mike and Anita's was pretty rad. Mike made ribs, and they were delicious. We had from-scratch caesar salad too, with lettuce from Liz's garden (I don't say "our" 'cause I don't do any work on it), and dressing made by Anita with some freshly cooked bacon. The fries turned out awesome too, even if Liz made so many that people ate a ton of them and we still have 2/3 left.
We watched some Mad Men back at our place after and that was that.
Monday
Day off! Liz woke me up rambling about a barbeque or something. I looked at her skeptically, so she went and did research for a while, then got me up. We went to Home Depot and they had a perfectly awesome looking barbeque for $200. Sold. Unfortunately, we didn't consider the possibility that the box wouldn't fit in our car. After we determined that no friend or family member had a minivan handy to help us move it, we emptied our trunk into our back seat and took the BBQ out of the box and put it in the trunk.
We also had adventures relating to trying to find an Air Conditioner. We determined Home Depot was the best place, even though we mostly ran out of gift certificates. It'll cost about $400 for a 10k BTU. Hopefully that does the trick in our little house.
Over the course of the AC adventures, we were near Staples, so went in to buy printer ink and found Prismacolors! The holy grail of pencil crayons! Both Liz and I had always been stuck with crappy Laurentians as children, so our eyes lit up when we saw the 60-pack.
Now, when we were kids, these things seemed prohibitively expensive. In our heads, these things cost $80 or something ridiculous like that. They were $23. Were we really that hung up about $23 as children? We must have had a very different conception of value-for-money than, say, my little brother who things $150 on a hoodie is reasonable. I'd debate for a month whether or not to ask my parents to buy me a CD, which cost about $20 at the time.
Anyway, we got the Prismacolors!
We later put together the barbeque, had Andrew over for pie, had a little colouring party, then watched some How I Met Your Mother. Good end to a fun day.