Four days of celebration.

To truly understand how fun Friday night was, I first should tell you that I woke up on Saturday morning with a one word text from friend Kaye:

"Wowza."

Kaye hosted eight and SURPRISE! an additional lady on Friday night for chili, games, and lots of wine. Double digit wine. But that's beside the point. We had Kentucky/Cincinnati style chili over pasta with cheese and oyster crackers, and played a game called Quelf.

Quelf was like Cranium on a combination of uppers, downers, and store brand grape cough syrup. I think it would be perfectly suited for a youth group at Catholic church---the things you were instructed to do were both completely innocent and absurdly wacky. They seemed like stage directions for acting drunk in a 1960's sitcom. Act like an ice skater! Every time you ask a question, touch your thumb to your eyebrow. You're it! No one can touch you and if they do, THEY'RE IT! It was a lot to keep track of, but we played for about 2 hours and only progressed about 10 spaces. I, it should be noted, only progressed 2 spaces.

Saturday night I was back at Kaye's to learn solo salsa dancing from Mai before we headed to Dana's birthday party at a Nacional 27. I unfortunately did not get to show off my sweet left and right turns to the beautiful people surrounding us---after spending the afternoon trying to post stuff to Craigslist and cleaning out our storage space in the basement, I just couldn't get into party mode. So I left my friends with beautiful vintage dresses and a-line shirts formerly used for Beyonce costumes and went home to go to bed.

Which means I was up and raring to go on Sunday, SUNDAY, SUNDAY! Rita and I went on a 5 mile run/walk, and then several us Cincinnatians went to Cinners, one of the few places to get Cincinnati style chili in Chicago (I'm only now realizing how much chili I ate this weekend). Then we all trekked to Stacey and Toby's house, where I got to watch them finish off a batch of beer and listen to records. Man, their house is so stressful.

Martin Luther King Day! Did you know that up until 2000 in Virginia, MLK Day was celebrated as Lee Jackson King Day? This was to simultaneously commemorate Robert E. Lee, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, and of course, Martin Luther King, Jr. Seems logical, right?

I celebrated by listening to several hours of MLK coverage on NPR. Cheers to having a black president, cheers to offering nothing but support to Haiti, cheers to having good friends that support each other and attend Go-Go Dancing class together. To me, the little things support the big things.