Chinatown Birthday Girl (feat. Eric)

Posted: May 4th, 2010 | Author: ERIC | Filed under: Love | Tags: ACen, And Eric, babysitter, cheesecake, Chinatown, Cinnabon, Coolest Little Girl In The World, faces, fat, fatbox, fried squid, gummy worms, gunBLADE, handbag, kabuki mask, keychain duckling, KFC, lame comic reference, late, love dicks, masseuse, memory card, misdirection, Mr. Intuition, mystery prize, poster, props, ribbon ring, sake, SCIENTIST, shrimp chow mein, tulip, wasting time, wooden boxes, zodiac statues | No Comments »

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Yesterday I went to Chinatown with birthday girl Fairchild, her boyfriend Bobby, and our friend Roxy.

It was kickass.

The day started with Bobby and the birthday girl picking me up from Bayshore. I spotted a red tulip before the pickup. This is always the sign of AWESOME DAY AHEAD. If I still had my blog from 2008 this would be an awesome moment of thematic coincidence, but alas…

Nearly immediately I am alerted to the situation: Fairchild doesn’t plan anything, Bobby is trying to be ‘on time,’ and without an ITINERARY and other crucial time-plotting devices, he is simmeringly furious. This is adorable as hell. I don’t mention it.

Next up is to pick up Roxy and her child, Queelocke. Q’s not coming with us to the party and is shortly dropped off with a sitter, I suppose Roxy’s step-father though I may have misheard/’terpreted. So that’s what we did. Naturally, because Fairchild doesn’t obsessively alert people in advance of her arrival (maybe she only did that for me on a fluke) we had to wait in her drive way and allow Bobs to make his “FIVE AFTER AND WE’RE LEAVING WITHOUT HER” threat. Again: adorable.

Coolest Little Girl In The World then refuses to wish Fairchild a happy birthday or hold her hand throughout the duration of her trip to being dropped off. It was assumed this frumpiness was due to her displeasure at not being invited to the party. I would be frumpy too. Not that frumpy, but, rest assured, rather frumpy indeed.

We then made our way to the rendezvous spot: Mayfair Cheesecake, to meet up with Pitt as he, in turn, waited for his ride and half of the party to pick him up. Whilst waiting, two things of importance occurred: the birth of an in-joke, and Roxy realizing she needed a memory card for her camera to record the day’s events. In retrospect, I wish I had taken more photographs.

Roxy: So who’s all coming to the party?
Fairchild: I’m not exactly sure. I invited a bunch of people, but a lot of people didn’t get back to me. You, Pitt, um… we’re waiting for Rainmaker and Anna, [lists some of the people who might be meeting us in Chinatown, I didn't interact with them long enough to assign them proper nicks], and then Tim and me of course.
Roxy: …and Eric!
Fairchild: Oh! Right! And Eric. I just thought he was a given. Haha, I’m so sorry!
Eric: Mhmm, sure. No worries.

When Roxy realized she didn’t have a card for her camera, it eventually came to the point where we were going to have to hassle Bobby to take us somewhere. This led us to being informed that, if this had been discovered sooner, we wouldn’t have SAT AROUND for fifteen minutes not doing anything. Remembering of course that we don’t have a schedule, listening to him grouch over wasting time is great.

After he’s done wasting time bitching about wasting time, we go to Best Buy, and there I take the only photo of our group’s gals, because I am attentionally deficient:

After our purchase of a memory card (and gummy worms) we return Pitt to the Cheesecake spot where he climbs into the Other Car, and we’re on our way to Chicago.

After a roundabout where Bobby headed towards Madison instead of Chicago. Poor guy’s so stressed out he doesn’t realize the general direction of major cities, and perhaps totally forgot where our midway stopping point was located. The town was Evanston, the purpose was buttons. Lots of buttons. Soon after it was determined that everyone was hungry, and we backed-up a bit to a whack of fast food places we saw on the way to the fabric store.

We parked at KFC, because birthday girl wants chicken. The majority of the group clamors across the street to Burger King. I decide to accompany the pair because I had by now decided that I would gravitate towards smaller groups and loners in some sociable attempt. I don’t really know. It’s just what I did.

Fairchild: (entering, Bobby holding the door open, she remarks on the sudden departure of so many of the group) Looks like it’s just me and Bobby…
Eric: …and Eric!
Fairchild: Oh my gosh I’m so sorry! I didn’t see you!
Eric: Don’t worry about it, haha.

There were lots of ‘…and Eric!” moments throughout the trip, but this is the last one I’m going to mention because I wasn’t legitimately forgotten about during the rest of the trip. It was just for fun, after all.

Anna came in a bit after us, as well. I think she was programming destinations into her GPS or something, as she was the driver and that’s all I can retrospectively decide on her having done. She bought me a bottle of water (she kindly offered more, but I wasn’t hungry. Yohimbine day! She had a wrap of some kind.) Bobby and Fairchild shared chicken strips. Later in the car, I tried some of Roxy’s Cinnabon cheesecake stuffs which was FRIGGIN’ AMAZING. She probably ate something else, but you know what you remember after being fed cheesecake? HANDS-FREE CHEESECAKE!?

Me neither.

I’m actually not sure when I took this picture, but I have a slightly fatty face, which suggests to me water and carb digestion.

Also sometime during the ride there was the subject of ACen. It originally came up pretty early in the trip but I didn’t suggest that I attend with until later on. Of their “fourth person” selections, one is a flake, one is dip-shi, and the last is me. I’m going to have to come up with a cosplay…

I would have to REALLY hate him to pick shi over Eric.

-Bobby

D’aw. He doesn’t REALLY hate me! <3

I’m not really sure what else came up. Roxy was playing games on her iPod, and at some point she used the 8-ball app to determine that not only does Bobby love cocks, but cocks love him, too! :D

Skipping to New Chinatown, then, WE ARRIVE!

…and I don’t have a lot of pictures!

One of the first things we do is look at the zodiac statues. I sadly only memorized mine, and I must have been the only Horse. (Though I smiled because somebody actually asked “Where’s Eric?” while everyone was huddled around the Snake statue.)

Horses are blessed with cheerful dispositions, and are well-known for their love of fanfare and attention. They possess a capacity for hard work and are extremely intelligent, sociable and talkative. They tend to be selfish and egotistical, however and are short on patience. The Horse makes a great adventurer but is a poor team member. These traits suggest a career as a scientist. A Horse prefers a tiger or dog.

I emboldened everything I agreed with. Fairchild scoffed at the sociable and talkative bits.

The Ox prefers a snake or rooster.

Bobby loves cocks!

We went through a variety of… variety stores. Keeping in mind of course that all variety stores are stocked by Chinamen, and as such 85% of each stores’ merchandise overlapped… I guess on some subconscious level this fueled Fairchild’s insatiable desire for mystery prizes. It did not, however, fuel her desire to be peer-pressured into trying some carbonated (strawberry?) sake. Ignore the fact that this is her 21st birthday and realize that she had no inclination to drink whatsoever.

But she was a good sport and tried it, as Bobby so eloquently put it:

You like Japan. This is sake. Shut up and drink it.

She thought it was horrendous both times she tried it (I drank from about the middle of the bottle and I am reasonably sure they were NOT bullshitting her about the bottom of the bottle being sweeter than the top. She was not convinced.) Too bad, this. I understood both her and their conflicting desires. I’m not GLAD she tried it (I’m glad I did, though, I thought it was pretty win) but at the same time I’m proud of her for making an effort to not spoil the morale of the party.

The dress store after this was closed, and I made a mental note to come back here and check out a ring that was on display in the window. Looked like a butterfly to me, but I was later informed that it was in fact a BOW. I felt very stupid.

I caught this poster stuck up in a window on the upper-level of New Chinatown. Actually, someone else did, Fairchild said she loved it, and I couldn’t resist taking a photo. Only after looking at it now do I realize that the expressions indicate our respective attitudes throughout the day.

Grunge: YEAH BUDDY!
Fairchild: Did I do that?
Bobby: FFFFFFFF *rage* DO YOU WANT TO DIE!?

But like the cop’s actor, Bobby didn’t really mean it.

Soon after the upper-level fail, we went back downstairs and soldiered on to acquire some eats before the Old Chinatown leg of the adventure.

I honestly still had no appetite (back when I got the bottle of water at KFC, I took some ephedrine to ‘replace the meal.’) So I wound up ordering what Roxy got: shrimp chow mein. I should have gotten the gravy version, but I didn’t know that until I’d gotten what I ordered. It was okay, I didn’t eat A LOT of the noodles, but all the shrimpies was devoured. The fellow across from me ordered the above-pictured squid, who HIMSELF is not pictured.

But I do love that guy’s expression.

After this we headed back to the cars to deposit our goods and made our way further to Old Chinatown!

Many shops don’t allow you to take photos inside the store, and being the rule-abiding failure that I am, I did not.

Though remembering that I wore a mask and had my picture taken makes me feel like an idiot for not taking more pictures.

In the FIRST store we went into, Roxy found piggybanks. I found one resembling Pikachu… and she got it! Later! On the way out of Chinatown. But still! Fairchild bought a Hello Kitty one. This store is also the one that started the whole mystery-prize craze of Fairchild’s. I was asked to choose between a fat and skinny package (AHEM) and I chose the fat one (AHEM AHEM.)

So Fairchild got the skinny one which contained a cock-eyed bird and some other ornamental type oddity, in their original package that appeared to have contained eight or so figurines initially. Roxy opened the fatbox, which had two little umbrellas in it (the size you might put in a margarita or something I guess?) and a much smaller box. This one had a pig with a silver pipe. It wasn’t much to be excited about, aside from the fact that of the two prizes available I picked the not-suck one.

Which of course put me on duty as Mr. Intuition which… sucks. I don’t have that power!

There was a cool-something in every store we went to in Old Chinatown. Rainmaker bought new shoes in this primarily-handbag store on the second level of a building, where I amused some of our party by intently and purposefully hunting for a rather specific bag; Bobby and I musing the virtues of Final Fantasy 8 after correcting Pitt on his discovery of “a gunsword;” the stops and purchases of candies and pastries (another nod to Anna for offering to buy me something to eat. I’m starting to think jokes of me being anorexic are being taken literally); my wearing and acting out of a mask; checking out cool little wooden boxes with Roxy, and perhaps most important and satisfying was my swaying of many of the group to purchase a certain duckling…

Eventually, much like writing this post, we all tired of the experience. We said our goodbyes and exchanged out hugs and handshakes, and then walked the same general direction back while quasi-comfortably remaining silent towards our opposing-destination group. When our half returned to their cars, another round of goodbyes (I think? I only remember reminding Fairchild about not kicking over her food on the floor of Bobby’s car. He was already relocating our goods to the trunk though, so, y’know. I felt useful.)

On the ride back I played the part of combination headrest/neck masseuse, and purchaser of a second Cinnabon Awesomecake. The girls were sleepies and the boys were attentively accommodating.

I really applaud Bobby. He clashed with the birthday girl on occasion but he was very honestly attempting to make everything go smoothly. He offered an experience just on the edge of safety and RAW ADVENTURE, so while it wasn’t everything-catered-to-her, it was definitely a good time for everyone involved. Which I think is the point of the PARTY bit of birthday party.

Plus he drove me home, and that’s just class.

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