Today I took Ashley to the yarn store (Jim drove and then went off elsewhere for an hour to do whatever) after her Farmers Market shift was over. This was very entertaining to me and she actually picked out yarn--four fancy balls of Malabrigo--very quickly. Jim gave her his credit card and no limit and she spent $90, so good job there, girl. It was adorable. I spotted Scott across the street and Ashley was all, “let’s go bug him!” and obviously I was down with this plan. I had just figured I’d drop his birthday present off with his mom again, but ...well, then we had something to do while we waited for her skeins of yarn to get wound into balls, which takes a while.

Anyway, we go over there and he’s busy and Ashley gets annoyed that he’s not actually noticing her over there for a while, and I’m just hiding behind bolts of fabric snickering at this and going, “Seriously, this is the funniest thing that has happened all week.” The whole thing was delightful. Eventually she went out there more in front of his eyeline and was noticed, as was I. I passed on the tie and he cracked up at it and seemed to like it as far as I could tell, showing it to his mom, etc. So, yay. Glad that worked out (especially since it turns out he already had the backup gift book I got in case the tie bombed out--will pass it to Mom).

Oh, on a related note to that: found out that his parents are both “stubborn Tauruses,” with birthdays on May 3 and 9. This amused me greatly since my mom and her boyfriend have their birthday on May 10. Plus well, me. I guess he’s used to Tauruses. Hah. There was also some mention of him saying that oh, yeah, guess I have to plan my own birthday thing, huh, but can’t have people over at my house*. I was all “your grandma seems to like to plan parties” and he was all, “yeah, we’ll have a family party later**” but who knows. Eh, if he does anything I haven’t scheduled anything in stone for that weekend, just a vague “might go to some fair with Loretta in the daytime on whatever day I’m free” thing. I did ask with regards to the store move and if I do anything for my birthday with the theater people*** and he said the actual store move happens after that weekend. So well, presumably he could go to something. If I figure out something. I am leaning towards scavenger hunt, though those go down in Sacramento so that might be slightly tricksy to get people to go to on a Friday night.

* I figure either people are slobs, hoarding is going on (actually, I assume not since god knows I’ve mentioned it in my family), or it’s the whole “there’s rattlesnakes and the house is literally falling down the hill” thing. I'm certainly used to the first two as to why we didn't have people over to our house after about 1996/2005. I concur that as a walking chaos magnet, I perhaps should avoid the place, or else it may turn into Disaster Junction.
** Yeah, there’s something we’d never do in my gene pool. Easter is as close to a “family” birthday party as we do since most people’s birthdays are around there, and I’m not even going to that this year.
*** Normally I go to a San Jose theater show and Scottish Games on birthday weekend, but I don’t think I’ll be hauling people down there and as far as I know, Cameron is the only one who’s into the Games and she’d probably already be over there anyway. Also if I go to that I either bring Mom or Dawn/whoever else..

Then his dad came into the store and they all went out to lunch, and we went back to get the balls of yarn and call Jim and then figure out lunch. Jim was also down to “harass Scott,” so we ended up going to the one restaurant he can eat in and saying hello, but otherwise we really weren’t paying attention to what was going on there (business stuff?). I was helping Ashley figure out her new yarn and the pattern she got, so I was occupied.

We also had some karaoke talk, as Jim may be doing a show in Davis in the future at that beer joint we went to in January. I hope that works out. We discussed having a basket o’ toys at karaoke. Then we went back to their house for awhile and did more yarn and karaoke, which Jim dubbed “karochet.” Adorable.

I did some duets with Ashley, did the ol’ Rick Roll and “Hold On” and “Listen To Your Heart”, and a few songs I’d probably never actually do at public karaoke, like “Alone” and Celine Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” (there is a stunning Jeremy Jordan version of this on YouTube).

Well, you know when you actually like, look at or notice the lyrics on a song, sometimes you are all “WTF?” (Example: “Pumped Up Kicks” is a cheerful song about running from a shooter.) Well, “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” turns out to be a song about Celine having nasty, nasty, law-breaking sex with her ex. Did you ever picture Celine doing that with Rene Angelil? Yeah, I don’t want to picture that either. So I decided to sing those parts as lasciviously as possible, except me being me, I was cracking up over the whole thing every time I did “and when you touch me like that.” Yeah, there’s a take on that song y’all never heard before.

After Ashley did “Yellow,” we got the brief idea to do songs of the rainbow, so I did “Red Red Wine.” Then the songs for orange were kind of strange, so I ended up singing “Orange Crush,” a song I have never heard in my LIFE but what the heck. I think it went fairly well :P

And after that, I went home, worked on the temperature scarf again and watched “The Librarians.” Watching “The Librarians and the Wrath of Chaos?” Seriously REALLY REALLY REALLY GOOD PROBLEM SOLVING IN THIS EPISODE, LIKE GENIUS LEVEL. I won’t get into spoilers, per se, but it’s all fucking good. Especially the ‘dumb” problem solving. Especially the “human sacrifice” bit. Especially the “we needed to stick the objects somewhere safe....” bit. Love it, love it, love it.

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