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It’s Party Time

16. A photo of you at a party. 6/11/2005. I turn 30.

The amount of effort that went into throwing this party for me still boggles my mind. It was an amazing mesh of friends from different spheres. Here we have Karen & Dan, Margaret & Michael and me. Then there’s Dave D, Sean and Sarah. And much joy and love.

Some folks have been asking about this photo-a-day thing and how it relates to NaNo, so I’ll put it out here in case anyone else is wondering. You might recall (or you might not) that a few times I’ve done photos of myself every day during November, just as something else to do in conjunction with writing the novel. This year, I came across this meme which lists 30 photo subjects and I thought that would be more interesting to do than posting what amounts to the same photo of myself for 30 days. So there you have that.

Up over 30,000 words (around 30,800 as of this writing) and I get an idea that makes me want to start all over again. I think I’m going to shoehorn it into the thing I’ve already been writing, but I’m afraid of ruining it for future use. I think it’d be really fun to write though. It’s called Me Talk Zombie Someday. Tentatively.

Anyhow, you’re probably sick of these, but I’m not, so here’s another bit of witty repartee between Paul and Arthur.

We headed outside, into the night and parted ways at our cars.

“See you Sunday?” Paul asked. He was planning a barbecue for Sunday and his wife had promised that some of her few remaining single friends would be there. The idea of a set up excited and frightened and terrified me. It was an amazing opportunity, rife with possibility, but somehow juvenile, unattractive. I had agreed to go, to give it a shot, to make the effort.

“Of course,” I said. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“And be on your best behavior,” Paul reminded me.

“You know, I’m not always an asshole,” I protested.

“Be on your best behavior,” he repeated.

“Alright, alright. I’ll leave the clown shoes and the taser at home,” I said. “But your kids are going to be sorely disappointed.”

“They’ll get over it,” Paul said. “It’ll be nice for them to see Uncle Arthur behaving like an adult for once.”

“They call me Uncle Arthur?” I asked, shocked. “They don’t call me Uncle Arthur.”

Paul sighed, caught himself, like he’d let something slip he hadn’t wanted to. “No, man, it’s just a figure of speech.”

My eyes widened with realization. “They do call me Uncle Arthur. Holy shit!” Impulsively, I threw my arms around Paul. “This is the greatest thing ever!”

“Yeah yeah,” Paul said, escaping from the hug. “Hooray for you, my kids think you’re the ‘shinzle’, or whatever it is they say these days.”

“It’s shizzle.”

“Shinzle, shizzle, what’s the difference? They’re all ridiculous words. Everything they say is gibberish, what’s it matter if I can accurately reproduce it or not?”