<p>*Hair dye – check.
*Redemption slugg pants (Alu wears these on her head) – check.
*Gas in the sluggmobile – check.
*Remember to remove the “Keep Honking, I’m Reloading” bumper sticker, and the gun rack from the sluggmobile – check.
*Multi-vitamin so that I can remember at least one of the super-secret passwords – check.
*Shoes from this decade that match – check.
*Excited slugg – check! :):):)</p>
<p>slugg - you crack me up…</p>
<p>Advance warnings: jmmom has just returned to internet receptivity land; jmmom is within 3 miles of Ground Zero and 120 minutes of Zero Hour; jmmom has forgotten the final supersecret password (but remembers several of the rejects); jmmom is having a bad hair day. But jmmom will be there, bad hair and all.</p>
<p>And, oh dear, jmmom just realized she doesn’t know what time Zero Hour actually is. *off to scroll through the literally dozens of emails to find the one(s) which discuss the “appointed time.”</p>
<p>Hey, everyone: Have (hope you had?) a GREAT time…lots of us w/you in spirit, altho not in reality…hugs to all…</p>
<p>Tell, Tell, Tell; it was fun wasn’t it?!!!</p>
<p>pictures?</p>
<p>With all due respect to tsdad.</p>
<p>No reports? people it is 8:30 am Ca time!!</p>
<p>:) YES, IT WAS FUN, and not one of us turned out to be an axe-murderer! I smiled all the way home. 
</p>
<p>And, yes, we have pictures! I’m making them into a (short) iMovie, and after we’ve all had a chance to veto or give it a thumbs-up, it will be ready to be distribute. Don’t expect anything like the Paris Hilton video, btw (which I did not see). It’ll be more along the lines of watching vacation slides of Mt. Rushmore. ;)</p>
<p>Follow the bouncing slugg to the next frame for a report of our activities (in between lots of laughter): ~OOOOOOo<:</p>
<p>What a group!–These people, awesome as they are on-line, are even more awesome in person! What a treat! Good food, good wine, good friends–yes felt like getting together with old friends, even though I hadn’t met any of them before. And to imagine, I was just a tiny bit worried they might be WEIRD or something . . . my girls were somewhat intrigued by this whole business of “meeting people from the internet realm”, though topmost on their mind was the question “How old were they? Were they all old like you, mom?”</p>
<p>Sorry, can’t talk now, folding towels…</p>
<p>Report? Report!?! We are sworn to secrecy. 
hehe 
</p>
<p>Well, okay, Lin (sp?), our waiter, was suave and debonair. We had a bat-balloon centerpiece provided by mstee. Slugg and SluggH wore slugg-sweatshirts. Any questions?</p>
<p>Wait, SluggH came too? And was SluggEvilNeighbor along? And SluggS who has his app in? And SluggD who has her first own apartment? I am telling you, Slugg has a future in sitcom writing. The cast of characters is already there. Oh, I almost forgot CluelessSchoolAdministration and the PTA that ate the San Francisco Bay!</p>
<p>Don’t forget the comedy from the CityAdministrator who tried to help Slugg whilst being polite to EvilNeighbor!</p>
<p>We had an evil neighbor many years ago, in a rural area. He did not want the gravel road improved, nor did he want any one riding their horses on the road, unless they lived on it and that was grudgingly permitted. After many years of hassle, including him suing all the homeowners over some imagined road transgression, he actually shot a gun at a rider- who happened to be married to a Sheriff’s deputy. Bad choice of vicitims, luckily no one was hurt, it did not take long before it was he was manuevered into moving. All those crazy complaints and it had to go too far and have him shoot at some one before any substantive action could be taken! Tread carefully Slugg, some EvilNeighbors are unstable…don’t even get me started on the former neighbor who once jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and survived! Yikes, crazy town!</p>
<p>Photos of SluggS were provided, through the ages,with and without facial hair. He was at his best around age 8, looking just like you would think a SluggS would look (cherubic with a dose of mischief). Photos “through the ages” were provided for all the S’s, although calmom could scarf up only one D photo (age 15, raving beauty) and mstee has so many S’s and D’s that for some reason she doesn’t seem to have time to assemble photo galleries. She did have one cute D captured on “film” (digital style) still residing in her camera. So she passed that around.</p>
<p>SluggH managed to act like we were normal and that he understood us (I think he’s been lurking). I know my H could never have pulled this off. SluggEvilNeighbor was not invited. Slugg claims to have no formal training in the writing department, but I don’t believe her. There <em>was</em> some mention of psycho-linguistics.</p>
<p>Now, the pressure is on, and I have to actually remember what we did! :eek: Let’s start off by saying who was there. There were six of us in our human forms, Mstee, Jmmom, Calmom, Mootmom, Sluggbugg, and SluggyH. Jmmom got a call from 09Mom whose car overheated somewhere on the freeway (no one was paying attention, really). We’re pretty sure that she made it home safely. We would have spent more time on the phone with her, but the bruschetta came, and well…you know how it is with cyber relationships. We all yelled, “Sayonara, 09Mom!” and went back to looking at the wine list. 
Alright, stop whining…she made it home…I think. We would have sent out a posse, but unfortunately, we all left our flying brooms at home. </p>
<p>So, Jmmom was the first one there. Our meeting place was a perfect, little restaurant owned by Mstee’s friend, whom we immediately adopted as one of our own. We’re inscribing her name on a shot glass in Sinner’s Alley. Our waiter was a darling man who made me wish that I was 20 years younger…yup. We gave him a lei. Uh, huh, I know what you’re thinking. Minds out of the gutter, children. As a matter of fact, we all got leis, thanks to moi. :D</p>
<p>I knew it had to be Jmmom because she was sitting all alone at a table for 6 trying to identify anyone who might look like a CC addict. That’s a funny look, btw, Jmmom. A cross between waiting for someone who could turn out to be either Santa Claus or Jason from Friday the 13th. SluggyH and I avoided trampling the small children near the door, and we headed for the table with the giant, bat balloon. </p>
<p>There was much embracing and kissing. We may have wept. I think I heard trumpets blaring from the kitchen. IT WAS COOL! We were easy to recognize, I think, mainly because I was wearing a teeshirt with a giant slugg on it. Plunking down next to Jmmom was the natural thing to do. Yapping commenced. Shortly afterward, Calmom cruised through the door. We all had that same tentative, determined look when we walked in, like we had just driven for an hour on Bay Area freeways on Halloween Night, and this better be worth it! It was, many times over.</p>
<p>Calmom slid into a chair at the end of the table next to Jmmom. Then, Mootie rolled in. By this time, our group greeting had devolved into an episode of Animal Planet. We howled and yipped and spun around in circles. Thank gawd, our waiter was there to occasionally remind us that we were in a public restaurant. 
</p>
<p>We passed around our kids’ pictures, and for some reason, I had 25 thousand pictures of my kids in my wallet, starting from Kindergarten through last month. We spent at least 20 minutes talking about our kids’ hair. And, we all agreed that our kids would kill us if they only knew…but, we did not care. We were having such a great time, and there was such a connection, we just had to be ourselves.</p>
<p>I found myself laughing and smiling all the way through dinner. It was a joy to share the evening with these smart, funny women. SluggyH soaked in the giddiness and the glee of our real-life conversations that ran in several directions all night long. Several people took pictures of the group in basically the same pose, slouching in our chairs with our elbows on the table. From Katrina to the trials and tribulations of essays, we covered every significant, as well as insignificant, aspect of college admissions and college life. Moot had a funny kitchen story. </p>
<p>The evening flew by, and Mstee’s kind, generous friend let us hog a corner of the restaurant way past closing time. I think everybody managed to get to wherever we were going afterward-- to an airport; to a home far away by rented car; to Berzerkley; back to the comfort of the nearby neighborhood; and back to the (choke) dreaded suburbs. Once again, I almost missed the same exit that I always miss whenever I take that freeway back home. Good thing we have the Navigatrix (our name for the well-mannered lady in our car’s console who talks to us). </p>
<p>By plane, train, or automobile, or if it’s Halloween, borrow a flying broom or rent a pumpkin coach. It’s a little scary, and you might have to spend 10 minutes hunting for a matching shoe, but MAN, WHAT A RUSH!! And, it was uber-fun. :)</p>
<p>Oh. I am just sitting at my infamous desk and smiling. Makes me think that we all actually have very lucky children.</p>
<p>sluggbugg great report! I can completely understand the staying past closing part :o
When I met soozievt in New England a couple months ago, we stayed past closing and I was completely oblivious to the server’s “is there anything else I can get for you???” [whoops] And it was just her and I and the DrDrew :eek: I can only imagine how late it could go with an entire crowd!</p>
<p>boohoo
I am so envious of all you girls gabbing away the night, especially since i was in the Bay area just last weekend.</p>
<p>Thank you Slugg for the full picture! Speaking of pictures, where are they posted???</p>
<p>Not yet, somemom, or at least, I haven’t posted ours. I made an iMovie this morning, but it’s super-compressed, and I have to figure out how to enlarge the slides in iMovie. I’ll get that together tonight, and zap it to the movie stars for a preview. I may have to Photoshop an extra chin that I didn’t know I had until I looked at the photos this morning. Should have something to post by tonight or tomorrow a.m. </p>
<p>Hey, if you party participants want to include any of your digital photos in the iMovie, zap them to me as j.peg files.</p>
<p>and now that digmedia has relapsed into visiting Sinner’s Alley, he can RATE OUR PARTY! How’d we do dig?</p>
<p>WE did spend some <em>productive</em> time - such as learning how to impress our jaded DS’s with au courant emoticons (mine had informed me that use of emoticons was passe), how to use RidX or other products to eliminate undesirable BF’s from the lives of DD’s, etc.</p>
<p>And, yes, we toasted andi (tall, dark and voluptuos), DadofSam, dig, Alumother, SBmom, curmudgeon, doddsdad and all other BayArea party wannabes. Btw, if we say it here, it happened just the way we say it did, right? ;)</p>