04NOV12

Any day that starts out with prank calls cannot be a bad day. That is, as long as you’re the one doing the prank calling.

It was the morning after my third Halloween party, and nobody was really very quick to wake up. Mike, Chirag, Big T and myself had all crashed at Mike’s place, after partying most of the night at Daniel’s apartment, and by the time I finally woke up Chirag was getting phone call after phone call from some government agency asking him about his “unique” internet usage. Mike was in the corner, playing around on his computer and trying to keep a straight face. T was completely passed out, if I recall.

After Chirag wouldn’t tell me what the calls were about, I walked over to Mike to figure out what we could do for breakfast – instead I found out what the calls were about: Mike had found a website that you could select a pre-recorded message, and then send it along to any phone number. It would even record the response for you, though the recording was only saved for a few minutes unless you paid up.

Needless to say, this prompted a torrent of prank calls – to Big T, to Daniel, more to Chirag… it was pretty juvenile and dumb… but at that point, before breakfast or coffee, it was the height of comedy gold to Mike and myself.

It did finally get old, of course, and so we convened the council of breakfasting and chose a spot to grab some wake-up food. We settled on the diner down the street that Mike and I usually head to, and finally started the day going.

Once breakfast was done, and a few episodes of Archer were successfully watched back at Mike’s place, the four of us packed into my car and headed into the city of a bit of adventure. It’d been ages since all four of us were together, so our plan was pretty simple – park somewhere, grab some more coffee, and wander around town until it came time to hunt down dinner.

And we set about it with a passion – Coffee was easy to find (this is Boston, after all), and from there we wandered around aimlessly. First Boston Commons, then some of the financial district, and finally back into the commons where we wandered onto a field just in time to watch the beginnings of a Quiddich match.

That’s right – Quiddich. The game from Harry Potter. With the broomsticks. Turns out it’s a real thing, with a few modifications due to our worlds distinct lack of magic.

• First – there’s no flying, as jetpacks are still too expensive. Instead, everyone runs around with a broom between their legs. It must remain there at all times, though you don’t technically need to have a hand on it. Sounds dangerous…
• There’s also no Snitch (the little golden flying ball they tried to catch). Instead, there’s a guy in a gold shirt, without a broom, who has a flag in the waistband of his pants. First team to grab the flag gets tons of points and the game’s over. A bit suggestive, but not a bad idea…
• There’re also no magically evil smash-you-off-your-broom balls. Instead, there are dodgeballs, and angry people throwing them. The angry people are on brooms though, from what I can tell.

I’m sure there’s a lot of other special rules and interesting changes, but we honestly didn’t stay long enough to really learn the intricacies of the game. Instead, we kept wandering and chatting, catching up and exploring the city.

Dinner came in the form of California Pizza Kitchen, where we met up with Daniel and Erin. I’m sure a lot of fun stories were exchanged and jokes were told, the prank calls certainly featuring, but none of them are really transcribable – they were all “in the moment” humor. But suffice it to say that dinner was awesome, and a great time was had.

From there everyone went their own ways – I gave T and Chirag both rides to their car/house respectively, and then headed home to do some more prep-work for an interview I had scheduled the next day. A simple and fun day.