Spoilers? I guess this post has spoilers.

Yesterday, partly as a change of pace and partly because we're all feeling a bit poor, a bunch of us (including special guests Graham and Nora) skipped happy hour and got together at Jenna's for Ben's Arrested Development drinking game.

You know how people sometimes comment on stuff that happens on a show by making up a pretend drinking game they're never going to play? We're not those people. We drank for magic tricks, Buster greetings, awkward George Michael moments, etc.

Maybe it was the three slices of extremely expensive pizza I had for dinner (which is to say: some of you guys owe me money, yes?), but I never got drunk. Ultimately I think I prefer more vindictive drinking games like King's Cup, Josie and the Pussycats, and Mariokart.

Later on Jenna made us mojitos and we watched the usual reality shows, including the ANTM finale. A show of hands had prettymuch everyone thinking that Anja would win — whether or not that was fair to Whitney — so it was pretty shocking when the judges ended up choosing the plus-size model.

(I was similarly surprised by the audience vote on last week's Top Chef. Dale is more annoying than Spike, but I expected Spike to get way more votes than he did. He's the hat guy!)

Slightly related: Now that she works for a closed-captioning company, Markie has been educating us on captions, specifically the difference between "pop on" (Bravo) and "roll up" (CW) captions. I am in love with Bravo's closed captioning, which allows us to chatter through the entire episodes (h/t Jinx), but the slow CW captions are too painful to use.

During my lunch break today I went to contest an insignificant-but-dubious parking ticket at the Violations Bureau. Well, to attempt to.

Well, to attempt to attempt to.

I had an appointment with the hearing officer — a government employee who decides whether or not my case has merit — but I still had to wait in line for 15 minutes to check in and get some sort of form to fill out.

After five minutes the clerks told us that we should be in one line, not two — that is to say, lined up behind the stop sign rather than at the wide openings on either side of it. Why they waited however many hours to tell people that, I have no idea.

We shuffled around, and eventually I missed my appointment while waiting in line. Or so I thought!

It turns out that the clerk I'd spoken to last week hadn't put my appointment into the system, so ha-ha, I wasn't late for anything after all. Not that the clerk I spoke to today believed my craaaaaaaaazy story about an "appointment."

I could either make a new appointment or go wait with the dozen or so walk-ins in the next room. I decided to make a new appointment.

Naturally I asked if I could have the form I'd need now, so I could skip the line next time. The clerk rather officiously told me that if I came back another day, I'd have to go through security again (...) and wait in line again to check in and get the form.

It took her several attempts to type "Daniel" into the computer.

So hungry. I'm craving leftover wine-and-cheese sandwiches. Actually, since I made these earlier this week, I suppose I'm craving leftover leftover wine-and-cheese sandwiches.

Recipe:

With a spoon, mix 1 block of cream cheese (8 oz.) with 1/4 cup delicious wine. (The original recipe called for port, but I just use old, leftover red wine. Which is otherwise useless.) Stir in 2 cups cheddar cheese, then spread the mixture onto 1/2 inch thick slices of French bread. Make sandwiches, then butter and cook on medium-high heat as for grilled cheese. If you use as much filling as I do, then these will be extremely messy.

Dinner tonight might be grilled cheese, with grilled cheese for dessert...

I was shanghaied into seeing Iron Man on Friday, after the usual bi-weekly drinks (at Wong) with the coworkers.

The movie itself was a lot of fun, but the opening night crowd was about as obnoxious as you'd expect. I ended up sitting behind a boisterous gangster parody who reeked of vodka; although to his credit, he was occasionally amusing.

(The kids behind me were honest-to-goodness gaywads. They weren't especially annoying or anything, but I was more than a little surprised to find that such people actually existed.)

My personal gangsta wasn't the worst offender: the theater seemed to be infested with would-be comedians. Maybe I'm just being incredibly chauvinist about my introversion (actually: not maybe), but I think there's something fundamentally extroverted about shouting out would-be witticisms in a crowded theater. I just can't imagine myself trying to hijack a movie like that.*

My annoyance here is probably just another manifestation of my desire to experience art in its purest possible form: ideally it would just be me, the screen, and the darkness.

(Related: my militant anti-spoilerism and my inability to do anything else at all when I'm reading fiction. If I have a glass of water with me, I have to stop reading to drink it.)

I've been playing more GTA IV recently — with the shades drawn and the lights off, see above — and now that the world has opened up a bit more, I'm really getting into it. The multiplayer won't replace Halo 3 for me, however.

Videogames took up a fair chunk of my weekend, but last night Amy and Ben came over to tag-team watching the Sunday cartoons with us — all three shows were funny for the first time in recent memory. Later on, Matt and I finally got to use the fire ring and burn my six-month-old "Beers of America" box.

I predict more campfires, particularly when/if we pick up more camping chairs. There is currently a shortage.

*By which I mean: at a theater, with strangers. I've no qualms with whispering to my friends, especially if the movie is bad. And if I had my druthers, screenings of Josie and the Pussycats would be like watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The weather was nice enough yesterday for us to have some happy hour beers on the Happy Gnome patio. I didn't have enough money or sense last summer to do anywhere near the amount of outdoor stuff I should have, so this summer I'm trying to make up for that.

Ben, Caitlin, Jenna, and Shelley all showed up, but it was nevertheless a bit weird drinking outside at the Gnome without Jess. Last summer we were there probably once a week on average, or at least that's how it seems now. O nostalgia!

I had both the worst Rogue and the best Ommegang that I've ever had, then headed over to Jenna's for the usual marathon of reality shows. ANTM continues to frustrate, unless you actually think the plus-size model can win. Then I guess everything is going swell.

I bought GTA IV earlier this week, but I haven't been able to get into it yet. Probably this is because I'm still only a few hours into the game, but so far I'm getting the illusion of space without the illusion of freedom.

I want to steal cars and search for hidden packages: I want to unlock things, I want to collect — but so far the game hasn't given me anything to do on those occasions when I've just cruised around. That's not to say that several aspects of the game aren't amazing, but I'm not especially excited yet.

(Back when I worked for BestMark, especially was our code word for criticism. You could say "He was not especially nice" but not "He should have been nicer.")

A coworker informs me that an email I sent out got forwarded to Adbusters magazine, and — long story short — I'm quoted there. Not a publication I ever expected to find myself in.

I accidentally took out my contacts before I sat down to post, so now I'm wearing glasses for the first time in at least a year. Some people do look better with glasses — in fact a lot of people seem to, given the right frames — but I don't see how they can stand wearing them.

So here's the deal:

You have to clean your glasses with a special cloth so that you don't scratch them. Theoretically kleenex would suffice, but you can't use that because it sometimes rubs off on the glass. You can use your shirt, but it's less effective and some people consider this low class.

If you think about it at all, then you can constantly feel where the glasses touch your nose and behind your ears. This is especially irritating when it's cold out. Furthermore, usually the fit isn't perfect, and you have to push your glasses up from time to time so that they look right on you.

(At Lawrence we often adjusted invisible glasses to signify our geekiness. The hassle of real glasses notwithstanding, I still find the gesture charming.)

You also have to worry about losing your glasses, or breaking them as I did once while raking leaves. Moreover, eventually your frames will get outdated, or you'll get sick of them, and then you'll have to spend another half hour looking at various styles. Trying to decide how you want your face to look for the next few years.

Your glasses will fog up if it's too cold or steamy. When it's sunny, you can't wear sunglasses and see unless they're prescription sunglasses.

(Personally I think it's stupid to spend that much money on sunglasses, because they inevitably get lost or stolen.)

Glasses fall off, and you can't wear them at all for any number of different activities. Some of your best memories will be blurry. That might be what bothers me most about glasses: sometimes in order to do something really fun, you have to take them off. I've worn my contacts while swimming and tubing and the worst thing that could possibly happen there is that one comes out. Hasn't happened yet.

What's really bugging me at the moment is the reduced field of vision. My frames are constantly in sight, like the world's dumbest HUD, and if I want to focus on something outside of those brown circles, I actually have to swivel my head.

I couldn't wear contacts for many years — my eyes were too sensitive for the brands on the market — but now that I can, I don't understand why anyone is still wearing glasses. Glasses are great as a backup, or maybe for reading in bed if your vision isn't terribly bad, but if you have to wear something every day then I highly recommend getting contacts.

Contacts are awesome. The only cleaning they ever need is an overnight soak in a cheap saline solution, and in about a week you can learn to put them on in seconds, without help from a mirror. They occasionally fall out if you use the same pair for too long or if you let your eyes dry out, but unlike a lost pair of glasses, a lost soft contact is not a big deal. They come in little fluid-filled plastic containers, so it's not hard to have a ready-to-use backup on hand.

I can imagine glasses becoming formal, like that uncomfortable suit you only wear on very special occasions, but that's not the world we live in right now. If you're still wearing glasses just because they look good on you, I submit that your friends don't really care that much. Canes can look cool too, but we'd rather none of our friends had to use one.

So things have been crazy, although my "crazy" includes a lot of stuff you'd call "unexciting and mundane." I filled up another journal, after three years of intermittent writing. I attended various low-key social functions. I have had constant but tedious work to do at my job.

At four o'clock this past Saturday, a bunch of us met up at the Flat Earth brewery for their first tour of the season. I've been on two other brewery tours, Heineken and Ganter, so it was a bit of a relief that this was just a Q&A and not a walking tour to demonstrate, once again, how a brewery works.

Unfortunately, I had just listened to the What Ale's Thee podcast where they interviewed Jeff and Cathie, so I didn't really learn anything new. We ran into John Gordon there, but I'm the only one who seems to appreciate that coincidence.

After finishing a few rounds of free sample drinks, everyone migrated over to Sweeney's for Jess' going-away party. Strangers and acquaintances soon arrived and the situation became boisterous.

I ended up hanging out until after midnight, and since I ended up not seeing Jess again before she left, I was glad that I'd stayed that long. I also got to see people try the bottle of mead I got at Cellars, a.k.a. the Liquor Store That Lied. I'd actually done some research on commercial mead, but I ended up having to buy some brand that I knew nothing at all about. Because of lies.

(Apparently it was only OK.)

It's weird to think that I won't see Jess again until June at the earliest, or possibly October, or for even longer if several of my nebulous plans fall through. Weirder still is that hers is just the first departure, and by the end of the summer Ben, Jenna, and Caitlin will also be gone.