Greater Satellites

I can’t dance.  I’m so white I appear as a glimmering star to distant galaxies.I was out this weekend with some people getting my groove on¹ when I realized why I often times feel uncomfortable on the ol’ dance floor: I’ve never been able to properly express myself through, well, dancing.

Bear with me here:  I’m sure with a little practice I could get good at it (like anything else in life) but I just can’t seem to get the hang of moving to a beat, which is ironic beings that I’m a drummer and all.   Trying my hardest at it, which I’ve done from time to time, renders me looking like a fool (which I don’t mind) but also dissuades me from trying again since my best attempt is laughable.

Either way, I take it with a grain of salt.  I’ll try a little more, and Jackie offered to teach me a few steps.  So I’ll genuinely try my best at it because all things are worth trying at least once… except maybe heroine.  Yeah, definitely not heroine.

¹ - There’s no groove getting on or around me at any time

As wise person once said a great place to start is at the beginning, so I will follow that sagely advice and do just that:

Friday: Woke up pretty early (10 am, hah) and checked the internets for jobs and things. Shortly thereafter we turned the heat on for the first time and found that there was a big leak in one of the pipes. Awesome! So we called the plumber and waited for him to come out and fix things up so my room doesn’t have a foot of standing water on the floor. That was taken care of around 12:30, and shortly thereafter I left for Jackie’s house. I was running a little late (as usual) but, luckily, she was too. We arrived at her house separately but almost simultaneously and talked for a bit while she gathered her clothes/costumes and got ready to roll. Come 1:15 we hit the ground running, bound for Pottstown. We met up with Jackie’s sister Christa at Wal Mart as they finished up some last minute party shopping. She’s very nice, and I had a feeling from just looking at her that I knew her type. Don’t take that as a negative thing, she’s a very nice person and quite tenacious. We got back to her house and did some decorating (I did the webs outside, thank you Spider Man) and began readying the foods and whatnots. People started rolling in around 8-ish in full costume and everyone looked great (one person in particular looked very yummy). Anywho, Christa and Mike’s friends were funny and very sociable. A little later Brigette and Vinny showed up and the four of us broke off for the remainder of the evening just drinking, talking, and joking around. As the night wound down people started leaving and eventually we all found a place to sleep. Jackie and I talked for a while before we went to bed and I told her some things that I wanted her to know. I won’t go into the details here, but it ended up quite well (no, not like that, perv). Slumber happened around 2 or 3am, I believe.

Saturday: Slept late at Christa’s house (later than everyone else, at least) and eventually left there around 1:45 for Philly. Ran into some traffic on the way home so it took a little over an hour to arrive back. Jackie and I said our goodbyes and I jumped head first into the awkward situation I like to call family get-togethers. The occasion was a suprise 80th birthday party for my grandmom. People started showing up around 2pm and the surprise happened at 3pm. Grandma was very happy and overall she appreciated the fact that, quite literally, almost everyone made it out. We had family over that I’ve never even met before. Cousins that I’m seeing for the first time. Uncles and aunts that I don’t know the names of. I’m not saying all of this for any reason other than setting up how many people were in my house… we have a very big family. At some point I decided to show my cousin Kenny the video I did by the name of Friends. He REALLY liked it and decided (drunkenly) it would be a good idea to tell my family to come watch it too. Now, these are people who, for all intents and purposes, don’t know me. Now they’re all excited to see Andrew’s “funny video”. The abridged version sounds something like this: my entire family watched it and every time I passed through the living room where a majority of the guests were, I overhear things like “There’s the Longshaft!” and “Can I be a Longshaft too?” For some reason, it was a little much for me so I did a couple shots of some really bad Canadian whiskey and continued drinking my beers. That made things better. Most of the family was gone by 10pm and I knew Marek was in town so I gave him a call. Denise, Marek, Kenny, Kristen (Kenny’s wife), and I ended up hanging out and drinking much more. We started a game of Ultimate Yahtzee around 1am and finished (with me winning) close to 2am. 2am then became 1am again because we had to turn the clocks back. Kenny left after the game, Denise went to be shortly after, Marek and I chilled for about another hour and then I booted his ass out. I went to bed shortly after the second 2am.

Sunday: Slept very late due to a relatively large headache. I wonder why? Anyway, some family stopped back over to drink more of our alcohol and eat more of our food (savages, I know) throughout the afternoon. A little after 6pm we departed for the Bates Motel up in Glen Mills. Unfortunately Jackie couldn’t make it, but it was fun group nonetheless: Denise, Ian, Kathy, Rich, and I. The lines weren’t too bad and we ventured through the corn maze, braved our way through the haunted house, and sat on the edge of our seats for the hayride. All of it was good and I’m not too proud to admit that I jumped a few times. Got back just before midnight when I started writing this and am now finishing close to 5AM because I got caught up talking to Denise, taking a shower, and watching a Friday the 13th marathon.

After this weekend, despite a little awkwardness with the fam, I can say that I haven’t been this happy in a long time. Thanks to any and all involved.