edg | Things

First,

Happy 25th birthday, jhyanmar!

Had a lot of odd dreams last night; a surprising number of them involving checking my email. Of the two dreams about which I remember any sort of detail, the first involved sleeping in my car at an elementary school so I could get up early and go out with one of the (male) teachers as a proxy for a (female) friend (and having to defend myself online against insinuations that I was going out with this guy because I was interested in him); the second, which I remember much more clearly, involved

nakedsilhouette (why did I automatically remember your old username?) managing and promoting a rock/techno show in my area, and going around all of the back roads around here on foot, polling to see what kind of music would play well. When I encountered her, I was driving, but my helping (she insisted her feet weren't sore as she limped painfully up the road) was to carry her on my shoulders. There was also a cameo by "Joey Manley" (I blame

demiurgent, who in this dream was a rockstar programmer driving a land-yacht (land yacht not actually a yacht) convertible in a devastating shade of purple.

Anyway.

I'm not going to be online much today, at least before evening; I'm meeting up with my aunt and her... boyfriend? fiancé? I don't know ... to visit the Walters Art Museum, which was, the last time I visited it (in... eighth or ninth grade, so at least eleven and a half years ago), the Walters Art Gallery and possibly lunch; after that, I have a party to attend in honor of the birthday of a friend from high school whom I hadn't even been in contact with at all since I graduated eight and a half years ago. (We ran into each other, completely coincidentally, at the Volvo/Toyota parts shop where I was picking up a replacement taillight socket. If I'd literally been a minute earlier getting in and out of the shop, or if I hadn't turned to scan the shop exactly when I did - the parts guy was running my credit card - we'd never have seen each other. So. I'm not going to the party for very long - an hour or two at most - but it'll be nice to catch up at any rate.)

Apropos of which, what do you bring to a party given in honor of someone's birthday, when you haven't seen the person in better than eight years, and when you've been invited by that person? Am I under an obligation to bring anything? I have learned from my parents that the all-purpose "going to a party" gift is a bottle of wine, but is that appropriate here?