[Editor's (i.e. my) note: Apologies for the lateness of this post. Work has been super busy, so although I started this over a week ago, I'm just now getting to posting it.]

Birthdays amongst my friends are a funny thing. Each year as a person's birthday approaches, assuming they haven't planned anything themselves, the rest of us get together and plan a surprise for them. As you, dear reader, would expect, the "surprise" factor starts to wear after a couple years, so as my birthday approached, I knew that something was going to happen, I just didn't know what. This year, the "what" was a party at Chuck E. Cheese.

The afternoon of my birthday, I got a suspicious call from Walter, asking if he could come over to get "the ski trip pictures." This was suspicious because I didn't know what ski trip pictures he was talking about. Amanda was over at the time, so after I hung up, I told her that I was pretty sure I was going to be taken away. She feigned ignorance on the matter, though I remained wary. Walter came and left, and still nothing. I was starting to let my guard down, when Amanda announced she had to buy something at the grocery store.

As we walked out of my apartment, I heard Matt say in a non-whisper, "It's Sha!" And the jig, as they say, was up. When I got to the carport area of my complex, I found my friends huddled around the wrong door. When they noticed me, they threw some rope and me and sort of tried to tie me up. After I used my Hulk-like strength to get out of my bonds, they drove me to Chuck E. Cheese (after making mysterious references to buying cups at Target).

Apparently Chuck E. Cheese doesn't normally allow non-kid parties on the weekends, but Walter worked his voodoo (i.e. sexy) magic and convinced them to let us have my party. Perhaps this is because I, while technically 26 years old, act about 4.

When we entered, I was relieved to discover that they had gotten rid of the whole line of scary scary animatronic animals and replaced them with a video screen and a single scary scary animatronic animal. Though animatronic Chuck E. Cheese was still creepy as all hell, at least there was only one of him, and not the usual whole army.

I ended up getting the whole Chuck E. Cheese birthday shebang including pizza, stickers, a cake, arcade tokens, cotton candy, a sippy cup, a sweet Super Chuck shirt (which we bought with our collective tickets, supplemented with some cash), and The World's Longest Birthday Song. Seriously. Two Chuck E. Cheese employees came to our table and did a dance while a birthday music video played on the screen for like 10 minutes. It went on and on and on. It was 80% awesome and 20% embarrassing.

My friends got together and gave me Phoenix Wright, Animal Crossing, and Advance Wars for DS, a new camera bag, and a gift certificate to Timbuk2. Thank you so much to everyone who came, and all the well-wishes from everyone else. My friends rule!

If I ever get around to it (yeah right), I'll post pictures up from the party.

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