For the past week or so, a few of us had been trading e-mails, trying to figure out what to do for May Ling’s (surprise) birthday. We eventually settled on a day at Raging Waters, which we planned for Sunday afternoon. Babs (the compulsive liar,) came up with a story about us going swimming at her apartment complex. Florence even told May Ling about a non-existent afternoon tee-time (that’s golf, not the drink) to throw her off. Everything was going swimmingly (har har) until May Ling dropped the bomb to Walter on Saturday evening that, you know, she didn’t really care for water parks. (I don’t know how the topic came up, but thank goodness it did.) What ensued was a frantic series of secret phone calls, e-mails, and text messages trying to come up with an alternate plan. Finally (around midnight Saturday night) we decided on a picnic at the beach.

Sunday morning Florence bought a whole bunch of food, and brough it to my place to do a bit of preparing before heading back to her apartment (“after church.”) Around 1:10 I loaded up the car and headed to Babs’ place, where I was supposed to meet Walter to transfer the food into his car. Unfortunately, Walter was running late and May Ling and Florence were already on their way. So I got there just before the two of them arrived, and we tried to distract May Ling until Walter got there. Walter called me when he did, so we all headed outside.

The afternoon was spent playing at the beach, where I gorged myself on yummy food, and I discovered that I do indeed throw like a girl. (But May Ling throws like a boy. ) I got my cotton candy, and Babs got her Dippin’ Dots (which I discovered hurt my tongue) so we were happy. We had 8:30 reservations at Sundance, so we sped on home and threw on a change of clothes before arriving 15 minutes late, covered in sand and sunblock. The prime rib was excellent, and we also shared May Ling’s free birthday mud pie. Afterwards, it was back to May Ling and Florence’s for more cake. I thought I was going to explode. In a good way, though.

Other than that excitingness, my weekend was low-key. I worked a full day on Saturday, then had pizza that Florence made on her cool pizza stone. I also finished watching Scratch which even more made me want to learn to DJ. I’m really tempted to buy a set of turntables, but since I’ve never actually touched any, I figure I should find a friend’s to try before dropping money on them. But come on: “DJ Sha” already has a ring to it.

Finally, at May Ling’s birthday dinner, I got some fantastic news. A couple weeks ago at dinner, a friend made an off-color joke to May Ling about her mother. He immediately regretted it, and apparently IMed Walter later that night to ask if May Ling was mad. Walter responded, “No, it’s fine. She’s mellowed out a lot since she started hanging out with Sha.”

Sha Sha Chu: Corrupting minds since 2004.