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When Chi joined the GR softball team in its first season, I knew him as a family friend of Wendy who had interest in getting some exercise. Who knew that years later he'd be a GR softball fixture, good pal, and practically my cousin?

Tonight Wendy, her brother, their cousins, and I met Chi and his girlfriend to celebrate his birthday. We went to a place called There's No Place Like Home in Los Feliz. The food is off the grill and it's quite good, but people really go there because it's set in a courtyard among trees and a fountain. Perfect for a warm summer night. I ate a three-mushroom pizza which was really good, but looking back I should have ordered a three-cheese pizza in Chi's honor.

Afterwards, there was cake cutting and gift giving. Wendy and I gave him a T-shirt and a capsule toy version of .45 pistol. He asked me where I got them, and I said, "You have to ask?"

At the end of the night, everyone was talking about crap they had to do tomorrow. For example, Chi's girlfriend is a teacher. She has to grade papers and turn in grades by 7:30. "It must be nice to set your own schedule," she said to me.

When someone says something like that, I usually come up with an evasive answer that emphasizes how hard we work on GR or how our deadlines have wiped out my last three or four birthdays (even though I love every aspect of it). Tonight I was too tired from driving from West L.A. to dinner and too full from the dinner and dessert to come up with anything snappy. All I could do was tell the truth: "Yeah, it is."