Tonight, for the first time in my life, I felt as if I was in a Fellini movie. It was so surreal.

Tonight (Friday night) was the awards banquet at Rob's hospital. This time Rob was getting a pin (I think he should have gotten a trophy and therefore need to find something cool and trophy like this weekend for him) for being at the hospital for five years. We got there around 6:15pm during the "mingle time". I met a bunch of his co-workers and then we headed for a bench and just hung out for awhile and talked. We decided to stay in the outside area because of a rather annoying man with an accordian inside. The theme for this year was "Springtime for Hitler", er... I mean "Springtime in Paris" and the whole place was decorated for it. The fake French accents and the accordian man started off the surreal feeling of the evening.

A little after 7pm we were all ushered upstairs and into the banquet hall. Rob and I picked a table in back near a door to sit at since he had suggested that we might want to duck out early. Because the table was tucked away in a corner, and due to the fact that not many people showed up to this thing, we ended up having the whole table to ourselves. It was very cool and kind of romantic. Or it would have been had we not been sitting under a large cross listening to odd French music. Rob tried not to twitch at the French rendition of "New York, New York".

I nearly made Rob pee his pants at one point when I mentioned that one of his co-workers looked like an old Sabbat character that our friend Marc used to play back in the days of live action Vampire. The character was a total nerd named Mr. Lickey and he liked to sniff panties. I think Rob will now think of Mr. Lickey every time he sees this guy. Hehehe. And oddly enough, the song that was playing while this guy was at the podium was "Thank Heaven For Little Girls". Too funny.

The night was even more surreal due to the fake French accent that the announcer had and the fact that he mangled the French language worse than I have ever heard. There was also a slide show featuring a movie marquee with "Good Samaritan Hospital" written across it and then a show of a bunch of pics of Good Sam employees. None were of Rob, though I half expected to see one of him on the toliet or something when they showed some candid pics. The background music was also a bit weird and reminded me of the "Souls of the Dead Children" songs at La Fondue. Things were so surreal at one point that Rob and I both half expected to see an Abyssal bunny slipper in scrubs hop around, look at us, and go shhhhhhh (sorry, bad D&D reference).

All in all, it was a fun evening. I think the weirdness of the whole event is what made it so fun. Rob was eventually called up to get his five year pin and I got some off kilter looks from other employees when I yelled "WOOT!!!" when his name was called. We ducked out a bit before it ended so we wouldn't have to deal with the crush of people leaving the parking lot at the same time.

Due to food allergies and sensitivities I wasn't able to eat anything other than a few raw veggies, so once we headed out we went to get some foodage. Rob said he'd take me anywhere I wanted to eat, so we headed to the crepe place in Santa Monica. We each got a dinner crepe and split a dessert crepe. When we were done eating we headed home. On the way home we made a brief stop at a 7-Eleven because Rob needed to get some Red Bull (he was driving and starting to get pretty tired). I waited in the car while he ran into the store and had a guy outside who was asking for money make obscene gestures at me.

We got home just a little bit ago and I'm doing a few things online while Rob is in bed. Not sure what's up for tomorrow other than sleeping in.

As a side note, we're having some problems with the bank. Some of the money that they put back into the checking account (due to the fraud) they took out again. So, Rob's going to deal with that next week and find out why the hell we're not being refunded all of our money. Our bank's policy is to refund anything that was taken out from fraud, so if they don't give it back to us we have no problems suing them for it and then taking our business elsewhere.

A private entry will follow this one.

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Your Irish Name Is...

Alannah Keane

What's your Irish Name?