I finally reached a milestone that I had been waiting for since I read the New Testament, one that I thought I would never reach — my 33rd birthday. I was too tired for the party — so tired that I was drunk before the first beer. It’s good I had someone to drive me, especially after the third beer. Too bad she couldn’t tell me that I was wearing a University of North Carolina jersey to a bar in downtown Raleigh (home of my very own North Carolina State University). At least I didn’t forget my very special party hat.

Planning the party was easy. I just showed up at a meeting that was already going on and said “Hey everybody, it’s my birthday!” Genius. And I knew no one would be so upset by this act that they would get up and leave in the middle of dinner. The meeting that I crashed was the Wake County Libertarian Party meeting. There was no where else I wanted to be on my very special 33rd. Everyone was great, as usual.

More photos from tonight’s get-together can be found at my new Picasa photo album.

Last night, I went out on the town to attend the grand opening of the Casablanca Hookah Lounge on the 600 block of Glenwood Avenue in Raleigh, North Carolina. While I’ve been interested in things like hookah smoking, Middle Eastern music, and belly dancing for a long time, I’ve never actually had the opportunity to go out and experience these types of things.

Without going into a lot of detail, I had a great time at Casablanca. It was a very comfortable environment filled with very friendly people. I definitely recommend it. The biggest problem is dealing with the customs and etiquette associated with such an environment. I was quite taken back by all the lights, good music, and comfortable atmosphere that I didn’t feel like I could deal well socially. Really this is just an extension of the fact that I feel I don’t deal well socially in all other environments. Now that I’ve seen such an environment, though, I feel that I will be more confident and more likely to entertain an easy-going evening on the town in such an establishment.

So to complete the title of this post — when in Rome, do as the Romans do, just be sure to get some Romans to go with you to show you the ropes.

Much of today was fueled by the activities of last evening. For example, I still felt a bit heady from the herbal cigarettes I made (and smoked) last night while watching Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”. This morning I woke up for a lazy Sunday, ate, and watched another classic horror flick, Poltergeist. I’ve seen this movie numerous times, but probably due to my activities of last night, I noticed a scene in the movie where the mom is sitting in bed “rolling her own”. Now, she could have been like me and making a completely legal herbal cigarette to help her relax before bedtime. This is completely plausible, except that she was laughing way too much. That, and if you’ve never watched the movie, the mom on that show is hawt. As most of my close friends can attest, I am a complete spaz who knows quite a bit about the esoteric chemical properties of things like nutmeg. That’s totally not-hawt, or kewl, or whatever the kids are saying now-a-days. Lesson learned: don’t smoke pot or your kid might get dragged to the other side; or don’t have kids and then feel free to smoke pot so YOU can get dragged to the other side.

After watching Poltergeist, I went to nearby Lake Johnson, intending to feed the ducks. But a more interesting bread-eating target appeared in the guise of a couple of gulls. After throwing a couple broken off pieces of bread at them, there were now between thirty and forty of them surrounding me. I’m sure that at least one of them thought my hair was reminiscent of a red-headed version of Tippi Hedren. All the birds on the bridge scared everyone who wanted to cross (except me, of course). Anyway, my wacky Mexican neighbor Esperanza snapped this picture that looked eerily like the latter half of “The Birds”. Lesson learned: absolutely no lesson learned.

Other than blogging and my pre-blogging desk cleaning ritual, I had a pretty good day. I finished it up with a little bit of herb grinding using my new mortal and pestle (as detailed in yesterday’s post, “Adventures in Herbology”).