HAPPINESS!

I'm in a profoundly good mood. Yesterday, we had our swimming party-cum-sort-of-farewell for Winnie that also morphed into a board game party. Only Yijun, Enn, the twins and I swam, all in black swimsuits. I wore this stringy black thing that threatened to fall apart at any moment, and made me very anxious about the possibility of indecent exposure. Haha. Thankfully, I quickly clambered out of the icy cold pool into my towel, thus cancelling out any such possibility. Due to the aforementioned iciness of the pool, we only "swam" for half an hour. We ordered pizza and sat in the basement reading my copies of Glamour and feasting on Strepsils(yes, strepsils), Marks and Sparks ready salted and Reese's Jumbo Size Peanut Butter cups. After polishing off the large pizzas, we proceeded to play board games, opting for a rather obscure game known as Hamburger that I used to play as a child.

Despite running around to open the gate for latecomers and sipping vague amounts of alcohol in a thoroughly unsophisticated (and frankly, downright stupid manner), Yijun and I won our very long game of Hamburger, completing our burger wayyy ahead of everyone else. We later played a hybrid of charades and pictionary that inspired laughter which pealed through my house. I think you could hear the raucous laughter from the top floor, even though we were in the basement. I took many pictures and Christine, ever the budding filmmaker, took videos of Winnie, Daphne and Kim acting out their words. We managed to cure Juliet's flu a little with a healthy dose of tablegang laughter and company, even!

After the food and games, we watched my dvd of Garden State, and later the dvd of my beloved Amores Perros. We dragged my Fatboys (aka. giant people-sized bright red beanbags) up to my room and the twins fell asleep on them. I shared my bed with Christine, the smallest of them all, and Yijun slept on my springy extra mattress with my childhood quilt (which Winnie seemed to like a lot).

Also, quotable quotes from the evening, with the help of Christine, because I lost my sms of them :

Bev (excited about impending win in game of Hamburger) : "NEVER FEAR, Beverly is HERE!"

Diana (to Daphne, discussing Hamburger strategy) : "Should we do HARD work? or SNEAKKKYYY work?"

Juliet (after Bev makes a crap tequila shot in an ESPRESSO cup) : "Beverly, are you trying to DRUG them?"

The twins (about to win at Hamburger, but worried about everyone else trying to steal their tiles and sabotage their possible win) : "We'll have security systems!!!"
(Diana makes weird security system like sounds and moves fingers like laser beams)
(To their consternation, Bev and Yijun proceed to steal many tiles from them)
Enning : "Um, your motion sensors don't seem to work."

Winnie : "I'm tired."
Christine : "I'll give you a kick in the head. It helps."

Anyway, after a long movie marathon and a brief attempt at sleep, we awoke to milo, Christmas cake, newspaper reading and magazine reading, all crowded around my dining table, quietly relishing the wee hours of the .. afternoon. My father bought me my Altec Lansing Ipod Speakers (!!!) which Winnie (thegenius) helped me to set up, much to my delight, and I played Postal Service and The Shins for everyone (which I kept saying I had the cd of as their songs played in Garden State, which was probably really annoying). Winnie left to get prayed for before she leaves for BMT, and the rest left in a heap after watching select scenes from my Return of the King extended dvd version. I had to shoo them out of the house so I could practice playing the pieces for my aunt's wedding in the evening.

And the wedding! What a lovely wedding! It was very small and in the Four Seasons penthouse. The best part was that I didn't have to play the piano after all, thus sparing me unnecessary stress and the inevitable heart attack that would have followed my "concert debut", as my aunt would have it. The older folk remembered that a guest and good friend plays regularly in church (aka plays way better than me) and she kindly played in my place, and far better than I ever could have. I felt the vague need to cry during the short ceremony. (We threw big sponge heart confetti!) Having attended two weddings the past month, I have come to the conclusion that they have the amazing ability to make me turn on the waterworks (or almost, at least). This June, I will have the pleasure of attending the wedding of the daughter of a close family friend that I've grown up with. She's very young, fresh out of college, all amiable and very bright (scholarscholarpresidentscholar) and to be wed to her high school sweetheart, which is quite possibly the most romantic arrrangement ever. Obviously, this will warrant many tears.

And so that brings an end to a lovely weekend. Let's hope tomorrow promises even more wonderful things.