Happy birthday! is not well-sung with a gun.

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BACKGROUND STORY: Last week, Joel and I came home from a refreshing night bike ride only to find a bunch of balloons very similar to these ones tied to our porch. It not being either of our birthdays, we assumed they were from our friends who sometimes like to leave treasures in our hammock. They had just made dinner for his parents to celebrate their birthdays, after all.

Me: But why would they have bought a Cars balloon for his parents?
Joel: Why would anyone but the Ammons have left Happy Birthday balloons on our porch?
Me: Yeah, that's true.

A couple days later, one of the Ammons came to our house, saw the balloons, and questioned our having them. Turns out, they weren't from them.

Today I have been cleaning the house and found the mystery balloons by the back door. They'd lost a lot of helium, so I decided to pop them and throw them away. The last one was one of those metallic ones, so it didn't immediately pop when I poked a hole in it. I didn't want to press all the air out of that tiny hole, though, so I put more holes in it.  As I was semi-consciously putting holes in the balloon to the beat of the song I was listening to, I remembered this story...

THE ACTUAL STORY I MEANT TO BLOG ABOUT: Once when I was working at a telephone survey place, we had a party. Our boss was leaving for a bigger and better job, so we were celebrating his last day with him. Sadly, however, it was still business as usual - there were just food and balloons involved. That place had a pretty pokey ceiling, and while some people were on the phone conducting surveys, several of the balloons floated to the top of the ceiling and popped, causing many people in the office to scream and many survey-takers on the phone to freak out, believing that we were being part of a drive-by shooting.

Thankfully, we weren't.

After assuring them that we were fine, (as I recall, I was just leaving a message, but I told the answering machine anyway), we hurried to tie the rest of the balloons to our cubicles so they couldn't float too high. It was a pretty eventful going away party. Popping those Happy Birthday balloons reminded me of that.