Party Costs

What's the cost of going to a party in Cedar Park? South American friends of Chaz's mom & dad invited Chaz and me to their daughter's birthday party in April. It was up in Cedar Park. None of Chaz's sisters got invited to it. Curious, no? The party was mostly boring, but the tres leches cake however was amazing. Later in the evening, much later, we discovered the real reason for our invitation; the daughter's hairdresser, Luis, and his friend also showed at the party. Great. We're the 'other queers' in the portfolio for these people. We know where we stand I suppose.

On the way back to Austin was when I started to incur the costs of the party. Officer Miller of Cedar Park saw my Honda Civic going 52 in a 40 zone at 10:30pm. Goodness knows that law & order will prevail in Cedar Park, so that was worthy of a write-up. Chaz was convinced she was after some underage drinkers or something wild like that, so I probably got the ticket out of spite. $92 to the court was the first part of the tab.

I did defensive driving online for the first time. I used DefensiveDriving.com, which cost $40 to take. All defensive driving courses have to take 6 hours by state law, and this course is insiduous in how it monitors that. Each 'slide' has a javascript counter which starts when the page takes focus, and STOPS if it loses focus. So no tabbing through quickly for us fast readers, no doing email concurrently. Must have that window on top for 6 hours of your day, full stop. There's lots of 'is it really you' questions that are used to verify that you're not paying your kid to take the course, and there's pop quizzes through it also. You can afford to miss a few of 'em along the way. Its a good way to take defensive driving if you spread it out, and really don't want to listen to other people's sob stories or silly questions about passing on IH-35. For me, it was a bit grueling at times, as I don't like being forced on a single thread on the computer, but I did appreciate being about to be in own environment & drinking a beer while taking the course.

If my non-work time is valued at oh $20/hr, there's another $120 on the tab. $250 for going to this party to be 'the other queer friends'. Or for that really great cake. I suppose I feel a little better about it being for the cake.