The Birthday!

We last left off with Leina opening the door to her surprise party. There were around 30 of her nearest and dearest, and they had lined up in a way that Leina was kind of forced to walk a hug gauntlet towards the back of the room.

Ricca, Kristi, and Ernesto flew up from LA just for the night. Noriko and Yuto were there with the rest of the family. Little Yuto was running around, a full 25 years younger than the second youngest person there, and enjoying himself immensely. Erica had printed out little buttons with Leina's face on them and everyone was wearing them. Tony and Erica had mixed two cocktails for the evening, the greyhound (grapefruit juice and vodka) and the cucumber gimlet (cucumber juice, lime, and gin). The latter was not particularly popular, and it made Tony wonder if maybe he should not have spent so much time that afternoon juicing cucumbers.

Charles had ordered big trays of sashimi and sushi rolls and potato croqettes and fried chicken, which were mostly devoured over the course of the evening. Erica and Tony also provided some homemade dips, a tahini miso one which tasted pretty good and one of those spinach dip made with the package of instant soup that pretends it's healthy because it has spinach in it, but it isn't even when Erica puts in double the recommended spinach. There was also beer; some fancy stuff Tony bought and Budweiser that Stephen had around even though he apparently prefers Miller.

Mary was the only soul from work willing to dive into Leina's private life by showing up. But the Aptos Posse was there with significant others. Serena brought a cake that a friend made that was good and really chocolatey, with insane ganache roses. Tony finally met Nicole Dare and got to talk to Miki, if only for a few seconds. Claire was there and so was Katrina and several of Leina's more obscure Japan friends from when she spent a year there back in '98, like Justin and Kenta were also there. As mentioned in the last post, Auntie came. Shirley & Nicole Ylagan said they would come but didn't, to the consternation of several other guests. Alice sent a card. Sanders didn't come because he said he didn't know anyone. And maybe because Ernesto was there.

So Leina flitted around, Ricca and Nicole Dare ran around taking pictures and then instantly printed them on this cute photo printer Kristi brought from work, drinks were drunken, food was eaten, and old school rap/hip hop was played.

Around 10:00, the goal was to get people moving towards Medjool, a bar/restaurant that Leina has been dying to go to forever. It took until around 11:00 until people actually got moving to the door. Erica and Charles decided against paying for the bottle service, so there was no reserved space. So they drove over, drove by, and saw a huge line out front consisting of the Marina/bridge-and-Caldecot tunnel crowd, or so it was speculated. So they kept on driving. Instead, they went to another Mission bar called Blondies, at Serena's executive decision. They closed it down. It dawned upon Erica, to Tony's horror, that they had just forced Leina into a Stephen Dodson birthday move! The irony was not lost on them. And indeed, later Leina learned that Alice's cousin Amber went to Medjool went and waited and waited but Leina never showed up!