Skating Scallops

I know many of you are anxious to hear all about my road trips to Arkansas and to the Blackboard Developer's Conference in D.C. You will have to wait. I need to write about the end of May and all of June first. Patience is a rare virtue.

On Memorial Day weekend, I baked 48 brownies and 56 coconut macaroons for the annual Durham FM Association hamfest, to raise money for the club. The hamfest was a success and I had fun selling tickets most of the day. That Sunday, I went to LA's 30th birthday party. That was a tremendous amount of fun. She had a roller skating party at Skate Ranch, which is located on the other side Raleigh. NP and I ate at Yamazushi beforehand and it was quite good, although I was surprised at how little rice they provided with each nigiri piece.

The party was supposed to have an 80s theme, but the DJ only played hip-hop. That was ok, because everyone else at the rink really knew what they were doing when they were skating to hip-hop. Their fancy dance moves were highly impressive and entertaining. I really enjoyed photographing the event and fortunately there weren't any injuries. We ate pizza and cake that AT made and smores (courtesy of AT's smores kit). There has to be some good, easy and cheap way to get still jpegs from an avi file. I'm just not seeing it in the software I have on hand, so you will have to be content with a picture of the cake. It was memorable.

The day of the party, May 28th, was also the second anniversary of the day I moved into my own house.

The following night I went to guitar practice and played Long Black Veil while singing for the first time. I've always been reluctant to sing in public, so the fact that DS and AP were also there made it an even bigger deal for me. JJ and EB picked it up very quickly, even though they'd never heard it before. Afterwards, we had a wonderful dinner with grilled bison burgers, grilled eggplant and scallops. I did kid JJ and JA about the possibility of my contracting Mad Bison disease. JJ grilled the best scallops I've ever eaten, because I've never liked scallops and these were absolutely delicious.