Today started out with such promise: I woke up, read more Harry Potter, and headed up to Friendship Heights to buy ingredients for the trifle I was going to make for a party we’re going to tonight.

Of course, I couldn’t find one of the ingredients. Not at Rodmans, Safeway, Whole Foods, or two Giants (including the new one at Columbia Heights). So I called Gramma and got a substitute (she mentioned on the phone she has difficulty finding this ingredient, too — that would have been more helpful when I talked to her earlier in the week than two hours beforehand, but she might have been under the impression I actually had my shopping done before the day 0f). And instructions for the ingredient she left out of the recipe.

So the first thing I did when I got home was to make the custard. It’s powder from a tin mixed with sugar and milk and microwaved until it’s firm. It’s been two hours. It’s still not firm. Ack!

I broke a bottle putting the bowl in the fridge.

I snapped at Rudi.

I’m on the verge of tears.

The party started an hour ago.

Why?!

What a relief to have actually read the book I am. It would have been so embarrassing to have been named Ulysses or To the Lighthouse.

You’re Watership Down by Richard Adams.

Though many think of you as a bit young, even childish, you’re actually incredibly deep and complex. You show people the need to rethink their assumptions, and confront them on everything from how they think to where they build their houses. You might be one of the greatest people of all time. You’d be recognized as such if you weren’t always talking about talking rabbits.

Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

Well, another weekend over. Disappointing. I could have used another few days in my weekend.

Friday night I went out to the Brickskeller with some friends from DC for Democracy.

Yesterday, I did not play softball. Other softball teams around D.C. got to play — Grateful Dating’s, our friend Raj’s — but not ours. No.

I did, on the other hand, wander out with Rudi for ice cream and some shopping — we came home with some large tea cups and a battery-powered cookie shooter (solely for the Christmas spritz cookies) from a sidewalk sale at the local kitchen shop and vouchers for the new HP6 book (which we’ll pick up in Bethesda Friday night at Olsson’s party) — before he went to the D.C. United game. After he left, I headed back over to the Western Market special event where I picked up a birthday present for someone (who reads this blog, so it shan’t be revealed now).

Today, I hit the farmers’ market, checked out an artisans’ market fruitlessly for a wedding present for my cousin’s upcoming nuptials, and sat outside at a local café and read some more of HP5. Then Susan and Phillip stopped by on their way home from Georgetown, so we got to set up our next games night. A nice upnote ending for the evening — a look forward to next weekend!

My college friend Kim has had her second baby, Thomas Robert, late in June. Both she and Thomas are doing well, as are husband Warren and two-year-old Katherine. Congratulations to the whole family!

I am lucky because in addition to having a caring family and a loving partner, I also have wonderful friends. One of them, who rises above the generic label of friend into some nebulous description no one has quite succeeded in defining, is Danny.

I have known Danny for 14 years since we both attended summer camp/school at a prep school in Connecticut the summer before our senior year of high school. In the same program, we ate dinner together with a bunch of our classmates one night when the dining hall served chicken. The chicken was a little undercooked, so Danny and I took the lead in trying to reincarnate the birds, figuring they were closer to living than to dead. You can see how that would cement any friendship.

We spent a lot of time together during those six weeks. He dragged me on an amusement park ride I didn’t want to go on at Riverside. I got both of us in trouble at The Met in New York.

We kept in touch through first letters and then phone calls senior year (my mother probably really wished I’d made good friends with someone in the local calling area), and then it became de rigueur for me to drive up there on Saturdays. We saw a lot of movies and spent a lot of time at the mall, hanging out in the inadequate bookstore and watching snippets of videos at the Disney store.

We adopted a cat together, which we then had to give up (he, because his grandparents wouldn’t let him keep it, and I, because I was too chicken to ask my folks, although the kitten did come home with me for the night, much to my own cat’s dismay).

We invented a rule of absolutes that would suffice as a universal law for why things had to happen the way I said they did. This came in handy with math proofs. (It does not come in handy with Rudi, who refuses to believe that I should be endowed with such power.)

Danny and Karen gave me my nickname, soe, although they are amongst the few friends who do not use it.

We made a pact that neither of us is allowed to die, regardless of whatever stupid things we do or that happen to us. (This rule makes some other people feel left out; it is not meant to. It also is meant as more of a fail-safe than as carte-blanche to test its boundaries.)

Our friendship has survived late night phone calls, hurtful emails, four years of college, self-destructive behavior, secrets, revelations, a cross-country move, a vacation, two car breakdowns, my senior prom, and family woes.

We have a bond that is unlike any other I have — one that is bound through time and space and lifetimes. We are lucky to have found relationships that are accepting of and unthreatened by this bond, but I suppose that’s part of why we picked the men we did — because they could respect such a powerful love.

So, Danny, I wish you a happy birthday today. It’s been a wonderful friendship so far. And luckily we have the rest of eternity for it to continue in.

No apple pie today, but I did manage a baseball game — the Mets came from behind to swat the Nats in the ninth — and fireworks down at the Reflecting Pool.

On tap for the rest of the week: Mets-Nationals games on Tuesday and Wednesday and (finally, we hope!) our first softball game of the season on Saturday.

Thanks to my folks for driving down to watch baseball and fireworks with us!

A nice Fourth, but I’m tired and headed to bed early. I will contemplate a longer post tomorrow.