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i was up at 8am, ready to go do some more painting since i wouldn't be doing any paving due to the rainy weather. however, i didn't tell jeff this fact and he wasn't at home, so i couldn't get into the house. instead of going back to bed however, i figured an early start to my day wouldn't be such a bad idea. i made some biryani for breakfast-lunch, then went down to harvard square to catch the matinee of "down with love."

to my surprise, the theatre was mildly crowded for such an early movie. the rainy weather might've had something to do with it (watching a movie on a rainy day seems like the right thing to do), plus there appeared to be some sort of inner city class field trip to come and see this film. after a few trailers (all romantic comedies), the movie started. i sat with my medium salted popcorn ("most of the money made by the theatre is through the concession stands") and my canned home-brought guarana soft drink.

after the movie, i returned home. cutting through the harvard courtyard, the place was a hub bub of activity as students moved out of their dorms back home for the summer. people moving boxes into vans and cars, students coordinating on cell phones and exchanging contact information with one another.

i left for manny's bachelor party at 7pm, arrived at copley square outside of the boston library with 20 minutes to spare, so i parked myself on the steps underneath and umbrella and wrote in my commuting journal until the gang showed up around 8pm. it was a small group, consisting of myself, manny, manny's best man (and daisy's brother) larry (all the way from drexel university), and daisy's sister's boyfriend dan. i was the only one with no real familial ties to the group. they had just gotten out from a ballroom dancing lesson (except for dan). they had asked me to come (with a promise of "mostly girls there, never enough guys"), but it was only later that i found out the class was full of older women.

initially we wanted to do bowling first, but the bowling place we wanted to go was 21+, which wasn't a problem for us except larry, who was still underaged. we scratched that idea and went to the summer shack for dinner, consisting of a series of fried seafood platters. i had a plate of fried oysters with fries and coleslaw. i saw chris muesel (xtsher) there but didn't say hi.

after dinner, we took the t to kenmore to go to jillian's. bad timing, because a red sox home game had just finished up, and the streets were crowded with people leaving. jillian's was crowded as well, partly to do with the post-baseball game crowd, partly to do with the fact that it was friday night. this was my first time at jillian's, i knew what it was about, but never had an desire to actually pay it a visit until tonight. we tried to get a pool table but the wait list was around 30 minutes. in order to kill time, we went downstairs to the arcade floor. i'm not much of an arcade player myself, i could never really get myself to plunk change into those things because i always felt like it was a waste of money. after 30 minutes we went back upstairs, our table still not ready. we waited some more before our number was called up, a table all the way in the back of the establishment, perhaps the pariah table where the ugly pool players get sent to. after confessing my absolute lack of pool skills, i was put on the same team as dan while manny and larry formed the opposing team. we played three rounds, dan and i winning most of them. no help from me i might add. when on those rare occasions i sink a ball, it looks pretty, but more often than not i provided the comedic relief as i fumbled my turns and made mistakes after mistakes. having had enough pool, we went back downstairs to use up the rest of the special jillian arcade money. we each took turns at virtual bowling (which fullfilled our bowling desires for the night). our evening at jillian's ended when dan won a tasmanian devil doll at some sort of racing game.

we grabbed a taxi back to john hancock, where dan had his car. while he drove us to manny's place, i was in the backseat blowing up the sex doll, which surprisingly was very quick to inflate (either that or i am just really good at blowing sex dolls). when we finally got to medford, i was in charge of bringing in the sex doll while larry and dan carried in the boxes of booze. thank god no neighbors were up and about, which would've surely led to an awkward moment.

we widdled away the rest of the night in manny's condo, drinking coronas (they did, not me, i had coke followed by water), shots of jack daniel (i used it to rinse out my mouth, "it burns!"), and smoking cigars ("let's race to see who can finish smoking it first!"). i gave larry some quick photo tips for his nikon 995, like setting the camera to manual-focus (to conserve batteries) and constantly tweaking the white balance instead of relying on auto white balance. before long, the table was covered in empty beer glasses and cigar ash, the living room/kitchen completely enveloped in cigar smoke, as well as the bedrooms, which nobody remembered to close the doors. dan was the first to leave (something about waking up to go to a baseball game tomorrow), then manny drove me back to my place.

when i got home, i changed out of my clothes immediately. everything i was wearing was saturated with cigar stench, down to my underwear. when the sun came up, i quickly jumped into bed and went to sleep.