Farewell, Derek... keep in touch when you're in San Diego!

I keep telling Eric that he doesn't necessarily need to be worried and ask whether I'm okay whenever I start laughing ("cackling," he terms it :P ).. but he DOES know I'm way too easily amused sometimes, hahahaha! Eric and I went to Erin's to say bye to Derek (I made a reference to GWAR's Cool Place to Park that Eric of course didn't understand, haha): there were about 50 people at the farewell party, including three babies. We had pizza, Samurai Sushi, wine, juice, iced tea, Sarah's cake, and Chinese take-out food for eats. Joe, Helen, Tim, Maxine, Lily, Lee, Winnie, Connie, Andrea, and I agreed that it was nice to see the babies (Megan, Nathaniel, and Joshua) interacting with us and each other! (consoling, crying, grabbing, staring, drumming, playing, pulling socks off...) They grow up SO fast... Stella's more than halfway through her pregnancy and didn't experience many problems in Bali when she and Billy were there recently. (she asked where Steph was: Sister's not been feeling well, and thought it would be awkward since it's a David Fellowship thing :P) Michael and Amanda's baby girl Megan was born on Thanksgiving: they DID ask Kenny and Winnie for permission to use the name beforehand. We also discussed Sophia and John's baby Olivia, plus David and Rosenda's son Ian... so many babies!

Jeremy remembered that Andy was kinda maybe joking last Friday about him and Eric being brothers... at first, he wasn't sure Andy was joking. So I told Nathan, Eric, and Jeremy about the time that little Julie thought Eric was our real brother: five-year-olds can't tell racial differences! We learned that John Law and Sharon are now engaged, and they'll get married next May. Sarah told us about how she was making so much pumpkin stuff and doing a lot of dishes: Michelle thinks she'll get sick of pumpkin things by the end of the month! Daniel, Rich, Chung Yan, Lesley, and Dylan were talking about the teachers strike and picketing while sending text messages to Chung Yan's girlfriend Karen.

Vernon had noticed my MSN name referring to the apartment situation, so asked about that: I also updated Andrea, Sarah, Ivan, and Karen on those things. (Andrea didn't see her boyfriend Chuck that much when she was in Toronto recently since he's busy on his obstetrician rotation, but DID manage to meet Jon for breakfast of all meals!) Then I told Vernon about my computer problems: if he makes it down to Richmond, he can take a look at it. (Eric can't figure it out!) Anita said that Jeff was watching Alien vs. Predator and Silence of the Lambs on Friday night while the teen girls were sleeping over, and scared the girls while doing so: that was the first time they extended the table fully with all eight or ten spaces! (Jeff will have to work LOTS of overtime as the supervisor of the entire RCMP if that's his family, hahaha)

Jeremy and I talked a bit about Jon: he must be busier this semester since he's hardly ever on MSN... last year, he was on almost all the time! We quickly dismissed the notion that he must be busy sleeping: he did call the family on Monday whilst running late for a concert, after all.. that's true to form, heh. Jeremy also went shopping for a bunch of things, including socks: his new invented concept is black sports socks that kinda double as dress socks. (he hates the latter, but loves the former) He remarked that he liked the white wine: I tried some later (as well as some red wine) and agreed.

We all signed a giant farewell card for Derek (he leaves on the 29th), looked at the cute costume photos of Erin's family in Shanghai, the toy snake (which Erin got in Mexico, and which Daniel put around Megan's neck), and the many (shelves of) books the family has! Phil, Nathan, Jeremy, Eric, and I discussed durian and the bubble tea at Dragon Ball: mixing flavors can be done, and sometimes powdered stuff is better than fresh stuff because the fresh will be too thick. (Jer recommends the powdered starfruit, and Nathan likes shaved ice... I remember a time when I was there with Steph, Karen Grace, and Jessica where Steph absolutely HATED her powdered taro and attempted to get me to trade my fresh strawberry for hers: no thanks!)

Andrea called Jeremy "Andrew" by mistake, I called Sharon "Karen" by mistake, and Sharon called me "Catherine" by mistake: it was a mini-pandemic, haha. We discussed (middle) names while keeping up-to-date on the hockey game: we won 5-2 against Dallas! It was a bit worrying when Dallas came back to tie it at 2, but Auld shut the door after that... phew! (Alan came in when almost everyone had left, but Erin's brothers Derek and Darren returned home around then too!) Nathan even wore his classic jersey tonight, and Eric wore a Canucks shirt too. (Eric's Sunfire car door made a nice divot in the grass, oops) It was definitely a good time: I got Phil to take a picture of me and Derek before I left, yay! (we'll all miss him here in Vancouver!)