January 29, 2008: Happy Birthday Gorilla!

I woke up early to decorate the apartment with the Gorilla's birthday surprise necessities from the euro store. I made her her favorite Gorilla feast but a little tired from the night before I dropped a few things like a pot and a fork on the floor while trying to make breakfast, so I think I woke the Gorilla up a little earlier than I had expected and a little earlier than she probably wanted to. We went to book arts and I finished my first hand made 40 paged journal. Remember I am starting a journal making company called Eanj + Fata so place your orders now..e-mail me at aji@umich.edu...if you want a one-of-a-kind-hand-made journal..just a simple email is all you need (because hand made things are always better made!) After class we went to Anna's for the usual (you should all know the order by now, so no need to repeat) and then we came home for a little nappy nap before hippie-hairy-mold photog ( I discovered my photo teacher has a rather large mole on her neck that has a small garden of hairs sprouting from it...delightful and very nice to draw). The Gorilla gave a presentation in class today and it was very interesting. Good job Gorilla!...you actually did something before me (mine is next week) Tonight we had an apertivo at our apartment. The twins cooked up a huge feast and our roommates decorated and bought more euro wine. It was an instant repeat of last night until our landlord came knocking at the door and obviously I was closest to the door. And obviously I was one the one who answered it. In a rather stern voice and violent arms motioning our land lord said "enough". And enough was enough. We had had enough. Well actually not quite enough...so we decided to go out. The masses of Americans have really started to go to our favorite hotspots. We headed to Beebop for a little Tuesday night grind to the Beatles but were could not even able walk down the stairs because it was so crowded with Amuricans and sweat waterfalls were dripping down the walls. I met up with Meredith (she just got to Florence tonight) and I also had another camp chi-jew-crew reunion in the middle of the street. By 11:30pm I was getting rather tired but the crew decided to head to JJ's. Thankfully it smelled like pee and it was too crowded that we were able to go home. HAPPY GORILLA BIRTHDAY GORILLA!

P.S. The night before @ JJ's we made the Gorilla wear an indian head dress and 2 guys bought her drinks. Tonight we made her wear a birthday cone hat. The bar tender questioned her as to how many nights she was planning to celebrate her birthday and she instantly told him that her birthday was a 24 hour celebration and then he gave her a free drink. She only speaks the truth. It truly was a 24 hour celebration and more fun than one gorilla and a sidekick could ask for.

A Night of Faces: Gorilla Faces, Volcano Faces, No Faces.

Because the Gorilla is not an average human being (she is actually a Gorilla) she had to have a Gorilla birthday. Not an average human birthday, but indeed a Gorilla one and thus it lasted 24 hours long. Last night I went to the euro store to begin preparing for the g-day. I bought all of the necessities in order to have the perfect Gorilla celebration. Items such as an indian head dress with multicolored feathers, 2 paper accordion lanterns, 1 dancing clown on a string, 3 bags of balloons, singing farm animals on a string of flags, 2 ballon patterned table cloths, candles in the shape of a 2 and a 1, streamers, blow horns and most importantly 10 bottles of euro wine. Just the basics. After class today, I stopped by the Centro (grocery store on my street) to pick up a few of the Gorilla's favorite breakfast foods so that in the morning when we wake up after a night of Gorilla celebration, and we can eat Gorilla food (my gorilla is a very special gorilla because she eats very high quality gorilla food...no kibbles and bits) Eggs, spinach, tomatoes, Special K with chocolate chips, and peach yogurt ( but we freeze the peach yogurt...we thought of this genius idea to quench our gelato cravings by buying huge cartons of yogurt and then freezing them to trick our minds into believing it is just like gelato...and it has worked..but sometimes we eat it as breakfast) Class class all day but after class we showered and got all dressed up to go this famous restaurant called Il Latini. Apparently they don't have a menu and people stand outside and the restaurant chooses you to come in. I say apparently because we never made it there. We were on our way out the door and I made the bold move to double check its location online and realized that in corner in small helvetica font it read closed on Mondays. Thats why I say apparently and thats why we never made there. This is not the only "apparently" moment of our evening but you will just have to wait for the next one. We decided instead to go to a restaurant that Ernest Hemingway used to go to to get his creative writing juices and a bunch artists are also known to have dined at this restaurant. Being the artists that we pretend to be, we thought it would be an appropriate back up to the "closed on mondays il latini". We ordered pesto with pine nuts pasta and a veggie pizza and the bar tender whipped us out two strong fruity + vodka drinks. Our dinner was fabulous, slightly lesbonic but wonderful. We were debating whether or not to get dessert but the waiter surprised us both with a drink and crumpet. He brought out 2 shots of what looked like foggy yellow pine sol and a small pastry, along with a rendition of happy birthday that sounded more like habby-de-birt-did-day what your name? AY DA-habby-de-birt-dey-too-ooo. Wowza the drink was strong and wowza the crumpet was delicious. It had this small little unknown fruit/veggie on top of it and when I tried it I thought it was a cherry tomato but the Gorilla thought I was an idiot. I think that I thought it looked like a tomato so I tricked myself in believing it was but now that I really analyze it, it was some type of berry. Tomato, Tomato, Potato, Potato. The waiter tried to convince us to go this bar called Amadaus and told us he would be there at 11:30 to buy us shots but we were on a mission to find this mysterious bar called Faces that apparently (note the word) had an open bar. Apparently you could pay a 10 euro cover fee and then it is "free" drinks all night long. 10 euro for endless drinks...impossible. All we knew about this Faces place was that it was on the other side of the Arno. We asked our waiter if he had heard of it but he said no and then persisted on us going to Amadaus. Like all adventures that the Gorilla and I embark up on, we do them determination and do not give up. We stopped at four very tempting gelatoris but no one had heard of it. We finally found a person who "apparently" knew where this open bar was. She said "oh yeah, open bar, faces, river" and a couple of hand singles followed by "yah, and ya's". We followed her "directions" exactly and arrived at an actual bar called "Open Bar", no not Faces, but a bar called "Open Bar". First failed attempt to find Faces (but second failed attempt to get somewhere as far as the evening goes) We decided to call our friend Max (who lives on the other side of the river) thinking he might know but he was more drunk then someone turning 21 should be. He met us in the middle of street and rocket powered the Gorilla into the air with ginormous hug. But we were a little worried that he was too drunk to hangout with us, so we walked him to his apartment and continued our adventure (side note: Max did not show up to our 9:30 class the day after..just to let you know!) Three bars down and a drink later we finally found someone who knew where it was. He pointed us in the direction and we were on our way but 5 seconds later he came running after us yelling "girls..it closed..it closed!". What we could gather from the cute little Italian munchkin was that it had closed because it had presumably gotten in trouble. But still curious and not satisfied with his answer (as all Gorilla's and sidekicks get) we decided to continue to follow his directions and we finally found the open bar, Faces (that at one point did exist) Almost as sketchy as the Florence ghetto, Faces, was once a hoppin club located in a small alleyway on the other side of the Arno with illegal black windows and small gold lettering on the outside. I freaked the Gorilla out by screaming because I looked in the window and it scared me so I screeched. Like the three little piggies, we "wee wee wee'd" all the way home slightly pissed but still in the mood to celebrate. We decided to bring the party to our apartment and with 10 bottles of euro wine, it was not hard to start. Surprisingly I am adjusting to my freaky roommates more and more and they actually joined us for an 80's power hour, along with Dina, Chatty and Kathy. 20 minutes into the power hour the clock stroke 12 and nutella birthday cake, pretzel shaped cookies, grocery story bought gelato filled the table and the candles were blown out with one monstrous Gorilla breath blow. Many pictures were taken, much wine was drank-en and then off to JJ's we did go. Unfortunately one of our roommates had never done a power hour nor did she tell us this until after it was too late and she threw up everywhere. I being the responsible roommate, took her home early which led to volcano vomiting all over her face. This was just not the night for all kinds of faces, but as a whole the night ended with a bang. While we didn't find faces, we did save 10 euros each on a night out.