I Suck At Celebrating My Friend's Birthday

Within my circle of friends, August begins the birthday celebration cycle. The cycle generally runs from August to January. This past Saturday, Karen, our seventeen month old daughter (Briana), and I celebrated my friend's (Cass) birthday. Too bad I suck at celebrating my friend's birthday.

For his celebration, Cass wanted to have a peanut butter themed pot luck. For anyone curious, the previous year's theme was balls. I'll have to admit, I do look forward to these pot lucks. In particular, I look forward to Cass's themes because they are peculiar and interesting.

Needless to say, I had to turn to my friend Google for possible recipes involving peanut butter. What I ultimately decided upon was southern peanut soup. I figured the item was different. And to me, I was a bit curious myself as to how the soup would taste.

It turns out, Cass really enjoyed the soup, which was good since it was his birthday celebration after all. Also joining in on the festivities for the night were my friends (Ellen, Marc, Kelley, Andrea, Garv, Aimee and her two children) and my BFF (Kerry).

I had a good time hanging out with everyone. With Briana running around, it did make it difficult to fully participate in some conversations. Either Karen or I would have to make sure Briana was not doing things that she shouldn't have been doing. And naturally, that meant that one of us had to be with our curious daughter while the other one was hanging out. That seems to be commonplace these days.

One the conversations that I was privy to was about Verizon, in particular the union, because Ellen recently returned back from maternity leave to go back to Verizon shortly after the strike ended. For anyone curious, Ellen is not in the union. So it was good that she was able to return after the strike, as opposed to working long hours on her first few days back to work.

It should come as no surprise that I am not a big supporter of unions. I think in the past, unions did serve a purpose which was to stop the exploitation of workers. And yes, there are cases that workers were grossly mistreated in the past.

In today's society, however, I fail to see why unions are still needed. For example, I fail to see how the Verizon union whose members receive full medical benefits (ie. don't have to pay for health insurance) are being exploited. If they are being exploited, then I would say a good chunk of all of the workers in America are being exploited because they have to pay for health insurance. It makes no sense, unless of course you happen to be in a union.

On a side note, during the Verizon strike I remember seeing someone outside of a Verizon store picketing with a sign that read "We have families". I thought that was pretty selfish closed-minded thinking, because I thought that the people who have to cover the work while the union is on strike... also have families, I'm sure. Of course, I'm sure that reasoning would have been lost on that particular person who was picketing.

Needless to say, I am not a big fan of unions. Luckily, the other topics of conversation that I was a part of were not as political. Among them were Friday Night Lights, of course. Garv and Kerry seem to be hardcore fans of the show. Of course, Garv is a hardcore fan of Taylor Swift too, so take what you will from that.

All in all, it was a good time seeing everyone.