Surprise!

A long time ago, Karen promised that she would never throw me a surprise party. She also promised that she would never lie to me. Today, after a surprise party last night which followed about a month of deceit, I find myself surprisingly (and pleasantly) not angry at all.

I was surprised to say the least! Me and Karen and TC were hanging out in the living room when the doorbell rang. I answered it and looked outside to see about 10 or 12 people who I know and like standing there holding balloons and smiling at me. I honestly did not know what to make of it. I think I figured it out about a minute later when they all quietly yelled “Surprise!”, but my brain was still trying to make some sense of it as they started coming inside the house.

For a moment, I was angry. I am not an angry person in general and it is especially hard to imagine staying mad at K for very long, but she broke 2 huge rules. I don’t have many rules and lying is one of the hardest things for me to deal with. The thing is, I know K as well as I’ve ever known anybody, and she would never lie to me or break a promise like that unless she really had a good reason. Her reason was to let me know that there are people who love me and care about me. She didn’t want to let my 40th birthday pass without marking it in a special way.

Her plan worked. I had a great time at the party and it was really nice to see everybody. It has been a long hard year and I have been more isolated than usual due to a combination of meds not working and dealing with side effects from trying to find new ones that will work.

I felt the love. More than anything, I felt the love from K. I know it was a huge deal for her to go against my wishes to do something that she really thought would help me feel better. I also felt the love from all the people who came and helped to plan it. I imagine it is not an easy thing to plan a surprise party for a person who can not make plans in advance, especially if those plans involve leaving the house. Very ingenious idea bringing the party to the house instead of trying to get me to the party!

Thanks to everyone who came and also the people who sent good wishes. I was really surprised at how good it felt to see people and how much I really missed them even though I didn’t even know it. K knew it. Thank you again K. I am not mad. I am very lucky to have you.

I didn’t get much sleep after all the excitement. I got up at 2am and could not get back to sleep. I was thinking about how much work I have to do this week. Several of the clients who I was waiting to hear from have sent me their content or made their decisions. I have two new sites to start, one site to finish, and am waiting on the photoshop files for a design that I will likely code into a site for another new client. It hit me hard that I really had to find a way to test sites in IE6 soon!

I considered buying a cheap used pc laptop, but in the end decided to ask my folks for an early birthday present of Parallels Desktop and Windows XP Home edition. I got them this afternoon (thanks mom and dad!), and as of this evening, I am running Windows XP on my mac. It hurts a little.

Both the Parallels and Windows installation went very smoothly. I played for a few minutes; just long enough to test IE6, change my user picture, and have a minor freakout that I didn’t remember to think about any anti-virus software. It is kind of nutty that I have anti-virus software installed on OS X, and not on Windows. I will deal with that tomorrow.

Warcrack update:
I have yet another new character. I decided that Greggo, the dwarf warrior, sucked too much for solo playing, so I went back to my night elf hunter on Scratch’s server with a new appreciation for my pet nightsaber, Bob. I quickly discovered that I really hate playing on a PvP server and started a new night elf hunter character on a normal server. The difference in server types is that real people players (as opposed to computer generated characters) can attack you at any time on a PvP server and on a PvE (normal) server, there are rules about when and how that can happen. I gave my new character the same name as my old one (Tsayad – hunter in Hebrew), but the new one is male instead of female, and a skinner/leatherworker instead of an herbalist/alchemist. So far, it is my favorite one yet. I still have one more level before I can get a new pet. Perhaps I will name it Bob.

5 thoughts on “Surprise!”

  1. I’m glad I could be a part of it all!

    On Warcrack: I never actually played D&D…I just really liked developing the characters. It sounds like something I could get addicted to, so I think I’ll just stay away.

    Reply
  2. I’m really glad you had a good time, bee! It was great to see you surrounded by so many friends. Now we’ll have to hang out “for real” sometime soon.

    Happy Birthday!

    Reply

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