I see a-Merc-u-reeee a-risin'....
For those into Astrology and that sort thing, Mercury Retrograde is not a phrase you enjoy hearing. It usually is a precursor to a lot of stuff going wrong. Right now, we are in a Mercury Rising period and it was quite evident this past Saturday night.
Amber had been planning a big birthday extravaganza for yours truly for quite sometime. She finagled some email addresses for a lot of my close friends and set up a party at the Orchid Karaoke Club in Korea-town. If you've ever seen Lost in Translation you have an idea of what the Orchid is like. A series of rooms of varying sizes and capacities, all with big screens and microphones (and thankfully soundproofed). You also have a "service" button to call the wait staff in to order drinks and food. A very cool idea and lots of fun.
The night started off on an odd tone as Amber and I dropped my roommate Tim to get his car from the repair shop. She and I left to head to the club and we got slammed in parking lot-like traffic on the 101. It took us about an hour to make it to the club (maybe a 15-20 minute drive otherwise) and we find out that they have no reservation. Amber had booked the reservation two weeks ago and left her credit card, so she was understandably not happy. It reminded me of that Seinfeld epsiode where Jerry made a reservation for a rental car but they told him that they ran out of cars. "That's what a reservation is for! You're very good at taking the reservation...no problems there. You're just not good at holding the reservation...which is really the entire point of the reservation."
We meet up with Jeff, Mitch, Jon and Christine and find that they have a room for us and there should be no problem. When we get to the room, Amber's friens Jen and Alex are there waiting for us. All seems right with the world, until...
...we find out that there is only one cook for the evening. An evening filled with about 100 people upstairs in the karaoke not to mention the 300 or more Korean baseball fans watching the big game against Japan downstairs. One cook. Orders were taking 2 hours or more to be completed. Insanity.
And amidst all of the chaos, inconveniences and ridiculousness...we all had an amazing time. There were about 15 of my closest friends and I was so thrilled to be able to hang out, drink, laugh and sing with them all.
It was a huge rite of passage for me as a situation like that, in the past, would have put me in a downward spiral for the entire evening and my mood would have wrecked everyone's time. Not that night. All of the stress was put aside and we all just had a great time. Amber was so excited to do this party and it all worked out perfectly. She rocks. She's an amazing part of my life.
So that was my Saturday night and my own experiences with Mercury Retrograde. I survived and thrived and had a great evening with my friends. I couldn't have asked for a better birthday.
..but man, I'm really itching to make a "moon in Uranus" joke here somewhere. I guess I really have grown up.
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