Actually I had planned to buy Christmas baubles and write the invite on those, then hang them off anything vaguely hook-shaped in my neighbourhood - trees, fences, possibly dog collars, and so on. Sadly, I was unable to find any leftover Christmas decorations in the stores.

Instead, I found leftover Easter decorations - a pack of 12 little yellow chickens (you know the ones - they're pretty much made of sparkly yellow pipe cleaners with plastic beaks and feet stuck on) for $1. I tied a small note, written in tiny handwriting on yellow paper (laminated for durability), to the left foot of each little chicken:

I wrote the link address on the back, in equally tiny handwriting.

I got some photos but I can't find the cable to connect my camera to the computer, so I will have to upload the photos some other time.

Anyway, it has been raining heavily for the last two days, and for some reason I feel a bit bad about the idea of leaving them out there in the miserable weather despite the fact that they are inanimate obects, not real chickens.

As far as I am concerned, they are my fluffy yellow soldiers. Plus, if I leave them out in this weather, nobody is likely to pick one up.

I have instead decided to take a couple to the party at my friend's place* this weekend.

* I don't think I mentioned it in this diary, but there is a funny story about that friend and her boyfriend, also named Daniel. The four of us went out to see some live jazz. The brochure told us to "expect honest, open grooves and swing", which we thought sounded pretty good. Turned out the brochure was lying. It was two hours of self-indulgent experimental crap. There was no discernable beat, and the music consisted of random noises like the saxophonists spitting water into their instruments, gurgling it for a while through their saxophones, and then SWALLOWING it. It was horrible. To make it worse, each "song" was 10 minutes long. Fortunately we all had a sense of humour about it, and coped by drinking a lot of wine and sniggering the whole way through it, like the mischievous kindergarten students at the back of the room. That was a couple of months ago. When we got the email inviting us to Other Daniel's 30th this Saturday night, I sent one back offering to organise the music. His response was "That was NOT funny!"

*Ahem*

The plan:

1. Arrive at friend's place. Meet and greet.
2. Ask where I can put my bag.
3. Wait to be invariably directed to either the host's bedroom or the spare room, wherever everyone else's bags are.
4. Secretly pluck a couple of chicken soldiers from my own bag and plant them randomly in other people's bags.
5. Hope that somebody decides to take their chicken up on its invitation.

Would you listen to a strange chicken that turned up in your bag?