Lawn Jobs and the Montclair Golf Course

Avast, ye readers! After days of entries ranging from angry to mediocre, today's Bubonic Plague Luncheonette will feature a more cheerful entry... dyarrrh harr harr. Land ho, I say! Shiver me shurikens!

Bright and early this morning, my father, my brother, and I set off to play a nice game of 9-hole golf at the Montclair Golf Course. But before leaving the house, I awoke to find a very sweet email in my inbox from a friend of mine consoling me for having to spend an extended stay in El Cerrito and offering his shoulder to cry on if ever I needed it (and hearing this from a former resident of El Cerrito, this was very comforting indeed). That email alone immediately put me in a far better mood than my usual morning crank, and pretty much set the rest of the day up in a promising manner.
The golf game was a much-needed break from one "driving practice" routine for another type of "driving practice." Of course, as readers who've kept up with past entries of the Bubonic Plague Luncheonette will realize, this type of "driving practice" is an endeavor in which I am doomed to be poor. Rather than bore you with the hole-to-hole details, I've broken this morning's golf game into bite-sized information nuggets for ease of digestion:

Statistics of my golf game:
Total score: 74
Average strokes per hole: 8.22
Course par: 3
Lowest hole score: 6
Divets made and grass replaced: 4
Divets made and grass patch lost: 2
Club used: #5
Good tee-offs: 1
Poor tee-offs: 8
Times my father blocked the ball with his foot from rolling off the green out of pity: 1
Profanities uttered: 18
Near-injuries by golf club: 1
Balls lost: 0 (surprise!)

Suffice to say, my father beat me with a score of 54, and my brother *narrowly* beat me with a score of 71, although I'm inclined to believe he cheated, as he distinctly admitted to "rounding down half-strokes." What the heck is a half-stroke anyways?! Arrrg. I'm telling you, you can really lose your balls in golf! Surprisingly, after taking post-game inventory, we found out we were only out a casualty of one ball that my father whacked into the blackberry bushes on hole 9.
After a pathetic but thoroughly enjoyable game of golf, my father and brother and I went to the nearby yuppie lane frequented by the students of my former high school and purchased delicious, healthy, overpriced smoothies. At said smoothie joint, I noticed the availability of a new, smaller size known as the "sixteen" - beats the shit out of me what "sixteen" actually signifies, as it's clearly not a 16-ounce cup. The only thing I can think of is that the "sixteen" is so small it's *barely legal* to be charging the price they charge for it.
After the diabolic golf game and barely-legal smoothies joint, I came home to find an enormous package from flowers.com, with the note "flowers for my kitten" attached. Inside were two-dozen gorgeous roses arranged in colors from pink to yellow to yellow-tipped with blood red. *bouncity bounce bounce bounce.* That alone absolutely made my day, and quite possibly even made up for the past lonely week in El Cerrito! I then spent a good 15 minutes trimming and arranging these roses into various vases with the help of my mother, much to the disgust of my old high school pal Michael, who'd come to take me to lunch and an afternoon of antics. After eventually agreeing that there were no vases suitable for two-dozen roses in the house, my mother and I improvised with a hurricane candle jar - resulting in a very pretty, appropriately gothly arrangement. The whole thing is now set by my bedside so I can give it the loving admiration and thoughts it and the sender deserves. *does the happy kitten dance* The best part of all of this, of course, was being able to respond to my mother's comment of "your father bought me red roses yesterday... I think mine are better" with "yes, mom, but I've got two dozen of them."
Lunch with Michael was good fun - we went to a different yuppie lane that he'd frequented in high school and had lunch at the Isobune... ahh the memories... and afterwards loitered around at the Double Rainbow ice cream joint for the entire afternoon talking about things like law school and the fact that I'm guilty of at least 4 out of 7 deadly sins (apparently, the fact that I admit to them does not count under the virtue of humility because the fact that I revel in it cancels it out). After the ice cream store, we took an extended peek into the local yuppie used book store, and I got to read an old translation of the legend that the opera Tristan and Isolde is based on - in so doing indulging in my long-neglected love for opera and mythology. Good times - I'm glad we've still kept in contact over the years, despite the huge differences our lives have taken on. I guess I've really discovered the importance of having a good friend, as I feel the strangeness of coming back to a place so familiar, yet feel so much more alone, as the familiarity of location brings me nothing without the people. Here's to you, Michael, I'll drink to that.
Actually, as a side note, I did manage to acquire a very cute small empty sake bottle for Amai to carry drinks around at Legends with, courtesy of the cold sake Michael and I had at the sushi bar this afternoon. Quite tasty - I've never had sweet sake before, and the bottle, well, the bottle's appropriately Okian-looking enough, although it does not say "Okian Fire Drill, Everbody Out!" That can be fixed I'm sure. Alas, for I'll not be taking it to this last Legends event, as all my LARPer friends are out cavorting in the woods this weekend without me *sigh*. I hope they're all having good luck with their various endeavors, though I'm hoping no one's are giving backrubs to Death or dancing in the local necromancer's lap in my stead :)
Then again, I suppose they've all got dignity, so I should have nothing to worry about.

Further bulletins as events warrant. Yarr.