great time, unexpected, but great.

so a few days ago i was looking at the calendar and wondering what i (read: we) were going to do thursday, having completely forgotten that everyone's friend daniel was flying in from amsterdam to give a brown bag today and sean was assigned to pick him up from the airport yesterday afternoon.

now that i was aware of the plans, i decided to stand by for updates, since this was sean's thing, not mine. best to stay out of the way and do as i'm told (is this the paula i went to high school/college/day care with? the one who, at age 3, held every stuffed animal she owned in her arms and under her chin to prevent her cousins from playing with them? yes, it is i.)

the plan: pick up daniel from the airport, eat dinner at preston, and play scrabble. because we are party ANIMALS!
the realization: eat dinner at preston while waiting for daniel's flight to arrive two hours late, pick said sexy german up from the airport and lapse into american giddiness over... whatever it is we silly american girls are giddy about, sit at the blue cactus while daniel and the since arrived spack-man eat dinner, drink a margarita at sean's house, talk about cooking shows and cooking "illustrated" publications, and drop everyone off at their respective temporary homes or modes of transportation... really, very little of what was supposed to happen. and a brilliant time was had by all. because we are party ANIMALS!

sidenote: very strange to sit at a table of 5 and have the men (and women for that matter) not be talking about the latest cable connector they found on the internet for cheaper than the other guy found it and instead talking about singing the national anthem, studying cognitive processes, and performing linguistic gymnastics. this comment on the heels of some exciting and reminiscent e-mails from my incredibly nerdy high school friends who are scattered about the globe and busy making our lives technically more fulfilling or at least more expensive... but there are a few of them who do human things too... i guess i'm somewhere in the middle...