Friday night I busted home and went to dinner at a Chinese place with Jenn and some of her coworkers. I generally like her friends, but I don’t really know them, so it’s hard to get too excited about going out with them.

We went to a place that serves Chinese “family style” - everyone at the table orders one big plate of something, sticks it on the lazy susan in the middle of the table, and shares.

In the immortal words of Joey Tribiani, “Joey doesn’t share food.”

I hate family style Chinese - almost as much as I hate Szechuan (I’m a Cantonese fan - more deep fried is better) - so I wasn’t too pleased to discover this, but it all ended up all right. I had some lemon chicken and Jenn had sweet and sour chicken, and we got an order of fried prawns ($1 each! expensive!) and some pork fried rice.

Saturday was the day to have your birthday party, or at least it was according to the people I know.

Saturday afternoon the extended family gathered in Sandy, OR for my grandfather’s 80th birthday. People I’d only ever seen like twice in my life were there (and they all expected me to remember their names and relation to me since the last time I’d seen them, 24 years ago or whatever). It was fun to see everyone, but it slowly turned into a school dance situation where each of the “families” (or “cliques”) would gather in a given location and talk amongst themselves rather than mingle. Which was OK by me, since I get along just fine with my parents.

After that, I went home for a quick nap in preparation for the next party, which started about 7:00p.

The next one was for my friend Jason, who I’ve known since college and who always has a great party. This was no exception, though I’m sorry to say that, due to both Jenn and I being a little tired (and some substantial intoxication on the part of yours truly) we had to leave a little earlier than originally planned on.

Two and a half hours in the bathroom at home and I was doing much better. (Let it be known that this is the only time I’ve ever puked from alcohol - this is not a regular occurrence. And it really, really sucked, so I don’t plan on doing that again any time soon.)

That said, the party, as always, was a great time and I look forward to their Halloween party.

Sunday I had planned on getting together with an old friend who I’ve been trying to get ahold of since before last Christmas. I like the guy

• we were like brothers in high school - but over time our schedules have become conflicted and we just don’t see each other much anymore. I’ll shoot an email or a phone call his way every so often to see if he’s freed up any (his time seems to be much more constrained than my own) and if I get a reply, it’s usually that he’s still busy.

Anyway, I got ahold of him via instant messenger on Friday before coming home and he said he’d call me Sunday morning so we could get together, he could see my house, and we could catch up. He even went so far as having me email my phone number to him so he wouldn’t forget to call me.

He never called.

So now I’m feeling like the jilted, abused lover in a bad relationship and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m tired of being the only one to put out any effort in getting together. You know what? Fuck it. If he wants to get together, he can make the effort now. I’m not gonna take this shit anymore.

Sunday we ended up doing errands and such, which did need to be done. Ugh.

And that’s the weekend in a nutshell.