elicia embarks on a new decade I

elicia's birthday dinner on friday was fun. it was at a vegetarian chinese place on main street. we sat at a big round table (in the end there were 16 of us altogether) with a round turn table type thingy in the middle. we didn't know that it was the kind of place that you order dishes to share. (i wondered, but didn't say anything. didn't want to add to the confusion) so we all ordered our own and they came back as huge dishes enough to feed 2-4 people. our eyes bulged. there were dishes spilling off the round table turner. nothing would fit. karey had to eat right from her very large serving bowl. it sat right in front of her. they must of thought that we had very large appetites. the price of each item was comparable to a single order though so it wasn't expensive but it could have been very cheap. fatima and i ordered together. we got the spring rolls and hot and sour soup to start with and our main dishes were a deep fried mushroom and seaweed combo thing (quite tasty with the black sauce laid on it 'like so'.) and a big dish of spicey pan fried noodles and vegetables. well it wasn't spicey but it was still all right. fatima tried to serve some for me and ended up putting most of the noodles on my plate in one huge clump. we became a living support to evolution by adapting to the situation. my plate became the plate to eat off of and we left the big dish on the table for others to try. and there was lots of cross table trading. our server was a funny guy. he joked around with us and was patient with our silly not knowing ways. him and the other workers (our table was right by the 'bar' or desk where you pay) were rather entertained by our antics. gabby taught us to sing happy birthday in chinese and we sang a butchered version of it, but when we were done they all cheered and clapped for us. there's some debate over whether they understood the words the way we sang them or just the tune we were singing. at the end of the night they started a song of happy birthday in english and gave us a plate of almond cookies. the stuck a candle in a marichino cherry which was garnishing the plate. it was cute.

after the party we went to doug b.'s house warming at his new riverside condo. at first it was really cramped and i thought it was going to be a dull event for me, but we decided to go play dice in doug's room. we had a few really heated games. there's something satisfying about ripping a pen out of someone else's hands, but it's really hard to write numbers down when you're in a hurry and you know at any moment someone will be ripping the pen out your hands. we had a lot of laughs and then decided to go home. elicia managed to score a box of chocolates for her birthdy before we left too. she's good. we walked out with joana and jonathon and continued our laughs all the way to our cars. i left my pop can on nikki's car so she and barb would know that we had been there. barb said today that nikki was going to throw it on the ground but barb wouldnt' let her litter. she said we don't litter in bc. good girl barb.

i fell asleep after reading something in the first few chapters of 2Nephi.