As fun as the cabin trip is, by the end, most of us are tired and a bit cranky.

Tonight we sat down to watch the Russian vampire movie 'Day Watch.' It's the sequel to 'Night Watch' which most of us had seen together in the theater, and although I wouldn't call it "good" exactly it was weird in a particularly fun way. So Nick rented the sequel for the trip, thinking it would be fun to watch it together.

It wasn't.

Maybe we were just all burnt out, but watching the movie (which involved vampire-like creatures trying to find a magical, and ridiculous, Chalk of Fate), and Nick's refusal to turn it off, just seemed to make most of us angrier and angrier. Young actually stormed out to the porch grumbling, "Why are we STILL watching this stupid movie!"

After the movie was over, we tried to redeem the evening by playing our yearly game of Tip the Cup. It's basically just a drinking game, but we start each round by making funny and unapologetically sentimental toasts. A nice tradition.

Me: Who wants to make the first toast?
[tired, grumpy silence]
Nick: Uh... I'll go I guess. Well, I know we usually start with jokier toasts, but I just want to talk about something that, I think, is important to all of us. I'd like to make a toast to... the Chalk of Fate, deep in Samarkand, hidden away in Tamerlane's tomb, holding the power to undo any action, and to undo the fragile peace between the forces of dark and light...