kyle and brent were fun to have at the fireworks, although brent was on the phone having family prayer during most of them. we played skipbo while we were waiting for the main event to start. as usual karey was doing very well (and in fact won), and brent wasn't paying attention (so as to add comic relief) and as usual i had little luck. the skip bo gods are never good to me. there was this large party of foreign exchange students by us, and there was like five from the group filming the fireworks. many of them kept standing up and one girl would cheer loudly at every new burst of fire works. it was canada's day to perform and they had a jazz theme. some parts i liked and other parts were so so. we're going to go next wedensday too.

when kyle and brent walked into our backyard 15 minutes early, we were still having our girl's drinks party. gabby said "are those your boyfriends?" "uhh no, they're my brother in laws." i said. "ya sure." came the skeptic reply. karey said it wasn't until later that gabby said to her that she just realized why they couldn't be our boyfriends. i guess brother in law doesn't mean much to some people. turns out gab and kyle were in the same mission same time. sara burnham and leticia met up with us at the works.

earlier in the week i noticed that i had 'dinner with fatima' written on my calendar, and sure enough it turned out that we did indeed have a date. "should we meet in burnaby?" i asked on the phone with my brownbudderbud half an hour before we were both off work. "or you can come to surrey.." suggested fatima who does not nearly resemble her name-syllables. "i can see this is going to be all about you." i said. so after work i had a little snooze and then did nothing to improve my appearance besides some lip gloss and drove out to surrey listening to bob for the 3rd or 4th time. i'm getting to know bob. best of bob to be exact..

so i arrived at the mahabub family hotel, and pulled into the scary underground where cement pillars were randomly scattered waiting to gouge my car with their evil surfaces. i found that i could not park in the visitors because of one such vilinous pillar. so fatima who was definitely not slumming it as per my instructions, hopped into my passenger seat. she instructed me to cactus club in north delta with a couple of too late instructions. at the cactus club we were seated in the lounge because we wanted to be as cold as possible and nowhere near the patio. the seats at the lounge table were big black leather armchairish affairs. perfect for lounging. i pulled mine right up to the table. phatty and i had some good talks. she told me about her new job and all about penny and rita mcneil who was fired from there, and their computer illiteracy, and i told her about my latest stress at work, weirdness amongst co-workers, which we discussed at some length. we also talked about my past relationship and the ins and outs of the outs, and the psyche of some guys. i told her how i haven't the least desire to jump into any other relationship right now, in fact the thought of it is repulsive to me. just don't want to. and we agreed that it's natural to feel that way. i'm all about the natural. we also discussed the latest on fatima's set up, dave. he has flame tattoos on his leg. i told her they were probably the hot rod flames. i ponted to a kid's shorts with the flames on them and i said "that's what dave's legs look like." a flame tattoo on the leg is a total turn off for me. fatima refuses to believe the flame tattoo story, and says things like "there's more to a guy than his tattoos." but i can't get over it as quickly. we sat and talked for a long time after the reamains of our bandara salads were taken away. then we went to the hot hotel and talked some more and then i went home with the windows down, the cool air breezing about my arms on the wheel, and bob crooning the folksie tyoons.

today i met edwin. he said i was a nice lady.

nap nap nap nap naptime.