Conspiracy Is My Middle Name

I can breathe a relative sigh of relief today. I've been harbouring the hugest secret for some time now. Once again, I found myself in the middle of a double surprise birthday event. Jocelyn and Em's birthdays are less than a month apart. And it would seem that we have now created a level of surprising that requires the bar to be raised every time. Which, as you can imagine, is kind of difficult after we've known each other for so long and have been doing this for many years.

Due to scheduling difficulties, we finally were able to settle on a date a couple of days after Jocelyn's birthday. But that still made it a couple of weeks too early for Em's, but as our motto for Summer 2004 states, "We gotta take what we can get". Boni and I took our places as the co-conspirators. But how to make sure the both of them are where we want them? Simple: make them part of the planning. Jocelyn was told to "reserve" the day for us, and Em was told "strategic" information about the day, but not all of the details. All Jocelyn knew was that the day would be filled with events, culminating into a dinner. That left the door open for us to spring a dinner surprise on poor hapless Em, who had no idea that we invited several of her friends and relatives to dinner. I had to miss the day portion because of work, but I was able to get to the restaurant on time (sort of). A surprise guest, a late brother and a few no-shows made the event what it always seems to turn out to be: a success. I still don't know how these things always manage to work out. I guess you could say I have a really organizational mind. And a flair for espionage. Maybe I should change professions. Or give lessons.

Sounds Like "Yours To Discover" or "Live Free or Die":

There were some surprise gifts for our birthday girls, which included our "slogan t-shirts". Now, for those of you who don't know, I have been inspired in the past several months to come up with slogans for each of us (Ada, Em, Jocelyn, Laboni, and me). After a while, it sounded a lot like a marketing campaign. In any case, some of them are ridiculously funny (and have some long stories attached), and some sound like slogans you'd see on a license plate. So here, for your enjoyment and ridicule, are our slogans (in the order they were created):

"More attractive than a 12-year-old"
"Dense...not lighter than air"
"Has to beat them away with a stick"
"Always an adventure"
"It's all about balance"

I'll let you guys figure out which one belongs to each of us.

"Shakedown 1979, cool kids never have the time"