In August of this year Roger asked me what I was going to do for my 30th birthday. At the time I wasn't sure, August is always my busiest time of year. After much discussion he offered to have something at his house. This works better than my place since most of my friends live a lot closer to him than me. We decided to have it on the Sunday of labor day weekend. I figured people would be available that day due to 3 day weekend. The night before was to be the fantasy football draft, that way people had another reason to be in town.
I came up with the idea to have an outdoor movie, since we hadn't done that in a long time. We decided to have a low key BBQ as well. Roger even sent out an e-vite to get an idea of who could make it. Quite a few people did make it; Greg, Travis, Josh (short stop in country), Tommy, Matt, Colleen, Kevin (and his new girlfriend), Jerry, Karri and of course Kelly.
Kelly and I got to Roger's place around 1:30 on Sunday. First we unloaded all the left over beer from the rehearsal dinner at the wedding. Then we went to Safeway to get supplies with Roger. We got some ground beef, hot dogs, chicken, beans, chips and ingredients for Kelly's homemade mac and cheese. Roger and I played some games while Kelly made her mac and cheese.
First to show up was Greg and others started coming between 3-5. Around 5 PM Roger started up the grill. I was elected grill master, which I did um ok at. Luckily no one seemed to get sick from the food and it wasn't all burned. Everyone seemed to be happy with it, even Josh the reformed vegetarian.
After dinner Kelly brought out my cake with all the candles on it. She started and others joined in singing happy birthday. We had her layer cake and some ice cream, it was really good cake. After dessert I started getting the movie setup. I hung the screen from the house with some help. Got out the step stool and setup the projector, laptop and speakers.
Everything seemed to work well. I brought an Epson 765c from work along with a Toshiba Protege M400. I got a new set of speakers for the occasion since I had wanted some. I got the Boomtube H2O1 and it really worked well. It is a nice looking, loud, compact and battery powered speaker set. If you want one check around for pricing, the list of $250 is almost $100 more than I found it for.
We first watched Tommy's fight that a bunch of people went to. After that we watched the main attraction of the night Gone in 60 Seconds. I couldn't find my original copy of the film so I had gone out and gotten the newer director's cut edition. The original wasn't even anamorphic so it wasn't a big loss. There was actually some noticeable changes to the movie in this edition. This was a good movie for a drive-in back yard movie experience. Lots of action and car chases, true summer popcorn flick.
After the movie as I was breaking down the setup everyone left pretty quick. Due to the amount of drinking the night before at the FF draft many didn't seem up for another night of it. By the time I left no one was still there other than Jerry and Karri who were on their way out and Greg who was staying to wait for Camille to arrive.
Thanks to all that came and enjoyed the night with me. Travis, Kevin and Roger were even well behaved. Since all three weren't drunk they couldn't feed off each other.
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