You gotta fight for your right

On Saturday there was a birthday celebration. The intended format was a BBQ. This was perfect timing for me, because not 24 hours before I'd decided to go vegetarian for a month. But this is not about the trials of my meat-avoidance (it hasn't been that hard at all so far, and I don't anticipate all that much pain).

Anyway, BBQ. Outdoors.

As per Plan A, we gathered in a lakeside park. Some started to set up the BBQ, tried and failed to get the fire started, while others kicked a soccer ball around, and so on. At the same time, there was some preliminary consumption of alcohol by a few (maybe only one person, but I'm not sure exactly).

I'd wondered about this whole public consumption of alcohol thing, but more experienced lakeside partygoers had done this many times before, and said that if we kept it low-key (kept the containers covered, drank in cups, didn't start trashing the place), everything would be fine.

Well, they were wrong.

Almost immediately, we were joined by a smiling police officer, who proceeded to engage us in an uncomfortable conversation. The birthday boy and one other brave responsibility-taking soul ended up getting fined $25 each. Relatively painless, but you might say the mood was adversely affected. And this also compelled us to change venues.

No big deal! We relocated to the patio outside the apartment building of the birthday boy. This was pretty convenient, since he lived right beside the lake and our encounter with the friendly officers. No problem. In some ways it was a better location, with chairs and lots of tables. So we started unpacking the food, opening some of the packages, laying it all out. Still trying to get the BBQ started--by now it was 7:20-ish.

This was when the birthday boy found out that the building rules forbade any gathering at that location past 7:30.

Great. OK. Pack the food up, carry it off, rerelocate. The party lives on!

The third venue was the backyard of an apartment building shared by some other partygoers. This place was a bit further away, and walking with all the food and the BBQ wasn't really feasible. So, the stuff got loaded into cars, some people drove, others walked, off we went.

As we gathered at the new new locale, and started to file into the yard, the landlord popped his head out the window and started to have a chat with those of us who lived there. They explained that we were just going to have a BBQ. The reply? Don't make any noise, don't play any music; cook your food, then get inside; other than that, have fun.

What I'm trying to say here is, no party has ever gone off more seamlessly than this one.

Actually, it all turned out OK in the end. After some time shushing each other for amusement, we stopped caring about keeping quiet, and (just to be extra rebellious) engaged in some guitar-playing and sing-alonging, which was pretty awesome. In connection to concerns about our noisiness, I was informed (and I will cherish this forever) that my voice sometimes gets so loud as to cause a sensation in listeners that "borders on physical pain". Good times.