40 blogs in 40 nights

With apologies to The Donnas, here is the first of what I hope is many blogs. Forty, in a row, to be exact.

I know, I'm fooling myself, but I'm going to try, I really am. Many of the entries will have to be short, sweet and pointless if I'm ever going to make it to 40. But who am I kidding? I'm just fooling myself.

But in case I'm not, then here's the rule. If I sleep in my bed, then it counts as one of the 40 nights. If I don't, I get a pass that night. There's an outside chance I will be out of town for a weekend in the coming six weeks, and that will make it impossible to blog in the wee hours of the night.

Oh yeah, there's one more rule. I don't have to wait until the evening to write the blog, but writing at 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. doesn't count as two nights, it's still just one. If on a Saturday I choose to write at 2 p.m., that's a night.

That's it, those are the rules.

So how did I spend the night before Easter? I went to a birthday party.

Unlike last week, when I spent my Saturday evening at a birthday party for a 1-year-old girl, this party was a joint celebration of birthdays for Cosmo and his wife, who have birthdays less than a week apart.

The party was at Cosmo's house. I like Cosmo and his wife, so I enjoy hanging out with them, but I knew I wasn't going to enjoy making a cameo at the party. Yet somehow I have a warped sense of obligation to accept such invitations when I can.

I'm somewhat anti-social in my old age, and while I can ask people a million questions if need be, somehow I'm not in the mood any more. Of the handful of co-workers who were invited, only one other guy would be attending, along with his wife and infant son. And I waited just long enough to show up that Jason and family were nearing departure. When the kid gets tired, the party is over for mom and dad.

Most of those attending were friends of Cosmo and the wife, which means I had them all beat by about 10 years.

So not only do I attend a party full of youngsters who are in the prime of their life, I decided it would make sense to wear the silly pink bunny ears I procured from my haunted house gig last fall. Nobody other than Jason's 1-year-old found them to be amusing, and even the kid wasn't that fascinated, even when I turned the blinking lights on.

So after 90 minutes I'm ready to leave and saying my goodbyes. I've endured as much bad karaoke as I can tolerate when some random woman decides she wants a picture of me with my bunny ears as I'm getting ready to ascend from the basement/saloon. I force Mrs. Cosmo to be in the picture with me and then end up in a conversation with the random woman. It turns out she was Cosmo's prom date in high school. They weren't even very good friends back then, yet they went to prom together.

They're friends now, and this random woman seemed really interested in having a conversation with me, which was bizarre and puzzling. She seemed disappointed by the fact I was about to depart for the evening. We ended up talking upstairs for about five minutes or so, and for the life of me I can't figure out why this woman found me interesting. She had no idea who I was or what my connection was to either Cosmo or the wife when she first approached me, yet she engaged me in conversation.

I never did figure out why I was so fascinating to her, nor do I really care. I did learn she was there with a boyfriend, which only made the situation more perplexing. And if she went to high school with Cosmo, certainly she must have known several people at the party. So why did she single out some stranger at the party?

Maybe these stupid ears are more powerful than I imagined. Yeah, that's it. It's gotta be the ears.