I went to Anna's birthday party at her house in the Bay Area this weekend. The house is quite cute and happily, in a good neighborhood for there. Plus hah, convenient for train travel for me anyway. I actually got to talk to her husband this time, which was very entertaining. Funny guy. Sarah also came--her first time making it to a birthday party--so that was good. The other guests were friends/coworkers of hers, some of which I recognized from the wedding. We drank, we ate, there was cake. There was a game of talking lawn darts that insults you when you hit the targets--of course Anna would be into that.

We also played a drawing game that is pretty much the pictorial equivalent of Telephone. You keep passing a paper down around the room on every round.

* Round 1: write a noun, fold over the paper, then pass it down to someone else and you get someone's paper.

* Round 2: write the rest of a sentence, like "____ did something funny."

* Round 3: you look at the word and the sentence and then try to draw the combined sentence. Say it was "A rabbit ate a pencil." Then you fold over the text and just leave the drawing showing for the fourth round.

* Round 4: write down a sentence describing the drawing, fold over the drawing.

* Round 5: Draw what the sentence says, fold down the sentence.

* Round 6: write down a sentence describing the drawing, fold over the drawing.

* Round 7: draw what the sentence says, fold down the drawing.

* Round 8: write down a sentence describing the drawing. Open up the entire paper and laugh at the results.

This game got especially insane when people weren't good at drawing, or are scientists and wrote down stuff like "Higgs-Boson" early on. I had to draw a mermaid eating everything on a table, which turned into "siren sushi," I think that later turned into a rabbit riding a spaceship... I also had to draw Kim Kardashian giving the FBI money to save Big Bird...you get how it goes.

I slept over there, which was nice. I slept a LOT. Then we went out for breakfast, then watched this guy make his jump for awhile, then I had to catch the train.

After I got back to town, I rented a Zipcar to go to Cool Patch Pumpkins. Which has the world's largest freaking corn maze still, since 2007 apparently. Now, at the time my logic for picking going to this one was along the lines of "hey, might as well go to the best one, right?" My old boss had told me that one of her kids took 2 1/2 hours to get through the maze, so I'd rented four hours of car time. I had it from 1-5 and got into the maze at 1:30...then rapidly started to wonder if I was going to get out in time because HOLY SHIT IS IT EVER BIG.

I thought I'd liked corn mazes before--but that was when I'd gone to smaller ones that were easier to find your way through. They do give you a map of the place when you go in (thank gawd), because YOU ARE GONNA NEED IT. I would recommend bringing a pen and a highlighter. Highlight the route you need to go and then use the pen to painstakingly mark where you're going. Hold the paper so that it's facing the direction you're going in every time.

Oh yeah, and perhaps not go alone ether, like I did? (Everyone else was busy this week.)

Now, when I was going into the maze at 1:30, I was going in at the same time as a Boy Scout troop (with lots of parents, and girls too for that matter). Now this seemed to be a problem at first because there were so many people and the aisles were narrow and you just couldn't get past the hordes when you were going in the same way as them, and I was wondering if I was going to make it through in time when I was behind this many people. Then on the first fourth of the maze or so, I lost my place and got lost and just started following the troop... at which point I realized that if I got lost again, I'd be having a freakout, and I'd rather follow the people who know where they were going! So I stuck with the troop the entire time (they didn't mind), and hell, I started helping with the navigating for most of it. Dear god, it was a complicated maze...but we all got out in about two hours. Huzzah!

I wandered around the patch for a bit and looked at things, then went home around 4. I used my extra hour of time to go home and freaking shower before dropping the car off...then I hung out in the nearby bookstore after dropping the car off. Fun times.

In other news, Mom called early tonight to tell me that she made friends with a girl my age who lives in SF and has a painting business. Mom was compulsively helping and saw her packing up her stuff and was all, "I have to help you," and then the girl wanted to go to dinner and have Mom come to SF for lunch or something. Interesting...

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