I’m sure others have experienced it, but it’s always an event: The birthday “party” for a child.

I use quotes around “party” because it’s really not a party so much as a “gathering,” especially when the child is under, say, 15. In this case, I got the opportunity to hit the happenin’ scene of the four-year-old birthday.

Now, let me be clear: The four-year-old in question (my girlfriend’s niece) is actually quite cool (except for the fact that every time I see her she runs up and tags me in the nuts). She’s a lot of fun to play with and when she visits I chase her around the apartment with a blanket over my head. (We like to call this “The Blanket Monster.”)

However, much as I like the kid and my girlfriend Jenn’s family, I’ve never been one for large gatherings, especially large gatherings of people I don’t know where the primary function is a “potluck.” That’s exactly what we had this weekend.

Whoever came up with the idea of “potluck” was either a genius or a damn idiot. I don’t even think I have to elaborate on that - if you’ve been to a potluck, you know what I’m talking about; if you haven’t, there’s no way I can possibly describe to you the interesting assortment of dishes that always seem to appear at these things.

Anyway, the “party” this weekend consisted of me eating sort of a potato-cheese concotion and some garlic bread (I’ve never been much for meatloaf, Vienna sausages, or salmon sandwiches in pita bread), watching the kid open gifts, and listening to people I don’t know talk about other people I don’t know in a way that makes me think that I should know what they’re talking about even if I don’t.

It was not quite as entertaining as the wedding reception I once went to that had the clown making balloon animals and the room full of handicapped kids doing the hokey-pokey. Maybe I’ll have to write about that sometime, though I’ll probably go to Hell for it.

FYI, that potato-cheese concotion stayed with me all the way through the hockey game I went to that night. Yowza.

And Jenn’s dad didn’t even wear his Shriner’s fez. What the hell kind of fun is it without the fez?

Well, I’ve finally finished the conversion of my web site from the old “MHS Vortex” style to the new, improved “paraesthesia” weblog style. The Gen¹³ section has pretty much gone the way of the dodo, though I’ve left the last version of the links and collector’s info pages up there so folks coming in can still refer to them if they really want to. The “tributes” sections are gone, too, since they really never got updated or anything. Hopefully you can just read about what I’m into or whatever in the blog.

Oh, and “AssKick!”, as awesome of an idea as it was, is also gone.

I’m also pleased to announce that, in related news, I have MUCH more free space on my account now that all of that stuff is gone. Maybe now I can post some more interesting and changing items in the coming times.

For those interested in such things, I found that N2 Toys is going to make Big Trouble in Little China action figures. That’s pretty cool. Now if they’d just hurry up on their line of Fifth Element action figures…

I realize this probably is of interest to no one but me, but I was able to successfully hack the Greymatter back end and create a little script that will allow me to dynamically include the templates from Greymatter directly into my other HTML pages (provided, of course, SSI is enabled). Which means it’ll be much easier to create my other pages and give them all a standard look. I added my resume and updated it to be current… looks pretty good. Now I just need to add back in some of the “about” pages and a fix-up of the Gen¹³ section and I’ll be good to go.

Of course, I see a lot of weird, funny, and (sometimes) disturbing stuff out there on the ‘net, but WTF People has it all. Not all of it is that messed up; some of it is really funny. Give it a look. But not at work, if you get, like, tracked and stuff. :)