Tag: birthday

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Happy 2 to the 5th power-th birthday!

2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 32 (unless my math is off, in which case someone should take my junior high math team trophy for 4th place in state and smash it 2 to the 5th power-th times). That number was really the most special part about it. Well, that plus my first time going dumpster diving.

My mom has been doing a lot of cleaning around the house. And when I say “cleaning”, I mean “throwing out lots of random crap that we don’t want or need.” Consequently, there have been a multitude of garbage bags that she’s asked me to toss into a local dumpster. That in itself generally isn’t a big deal. It’s only when she realizes there’s a bag in the corner that should have been tossed, which means there’s a bag in the dumpster that isn’t supposed to be there. Yeah, that’s a big deal.

So there we were, driving off into the distance at 10:00 at night—after all, we had to go out to a restaurant for my birthday dinner. I don’t really need a party with gifts and balloons, but those little ice cream sundaes with candles on them? They’re like heaven with whipped cream on top. Upon arriving at the dumpster, we turned on the headlights, grabbed a flashlight to shine inside and went digging. (Technically, I’m tall enough that I wasn’t actually diving in there, but grant me some creative license, wouldja?)

Thankfully, only a few more things had been added since I’d made my initial drop. Even more thankfully, none of those things tried to bite me or emit noxious fumes to knock me to the ground, twitching and foaming at the mouth. Nope, I just lifted a few things, saw the bag that shouldn’t have been there, switched it with the bag to throw out and headed home.

Admittedly, it wasn’t terribly exciting—not much of a story for the grandkids—but at least I can tell people that I have gone dumpster diving. On my birthday. After eating an ice cream sundae. And I never felt the urge to heave it back up into the dumpster 2 to the 5th power-th times, either. My junior high math teacher would be proud.

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Why grow up when you can just grow old?

I was shuffling through a pile of paper at work and came upon some random fax machine cover sheet. To commemorate the last few hours before my 31st birthday, I spent about five minutes folding it into an airplane, wrote “RECYCLE ME!” on the wings, then tossed it over the wall and into the next cubicle. And then I spent about five minutes trying to control a case of the giggle fits. Today was a good day…

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Well, you’ll miss out.

And wouldn’t you know it, I did. Thankfully, they’ll be replaying the first episode of this season’s Beauty and the Geek again on Thursday, so you’ll have to wait until then for a vaguely amusing review based on what the editors show us plus my personal biases.

I think my reason for missing most of the show is legit: I was having dinner with some family members to celebrate my grandma’s 90th birthday. We decided to meet at 6:00, which meant I missed the last (retelevised) part of the USA v. Nigeria game in the Women’s World Cup; thankfully, the team won 1-0 without me and took the top seed in Group B. “USA! USA! USA!”

. . .

Anyway! Because the restaurant we went to was a buffet and I went back for thirds—salad, main course, ice cream… plus a few cookies and a breadstick for good measure—it took a while to finish and I got home with about 20 minutes of Beauty and the Geek remaining. Damn…

Aside from all that, happy 90th birthday, Grandma! Hope you can make it back for a second plate on your 100th, too.

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Why is 30 *BIG*?

I don’t feel any different than yesterday (aside from being woken up by my uncle singing “Happy Birthday” this morning), but something about round numbers is really appealing to people, I suppose. Plus the price of car insurance goes down when you turn 30. Yay 30!

So here’s a happy birthday story to let you all know how much of a party animal I am. At approximately 2:00pm, October 19th, 1976, I popped out of my mommy’s tummy. My first act was screaming my damn fool head off (though technically, it did remain attached to the rest of my body). My second act was to show my gratitude to the doctor for removing me from the warm and comfy place where I had been residing: I pissed all over him. My third act, just in case the doctor didn’t realize just how thankful I was, was to take a dump on his scrubs. Thus, my family quickly discovered that all three ends worked.

Now, 30 years later, I have a little more self-restraint. I’ve developed an indoor voice and I’m potty-trained (for the most part), so I found out that they’re still functioning properly this morning without as much fanfare. However, when my uncle came to my room singing “Happy Birthday” and tried to drag me out of bed, thus removing me from the warm and comfy place where I had been residing…

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Merrrrry birthday!

I picked up the mail on Thursday and was greeted by a catalog from Fleet Farm that had a smiling Santa Claus on the front. It wanted to make sure I knew that “Toyland Opens Saturday, October 14 at 7:00am!” I’m turning the big THREE-OH on the big NINE-TEENTH and I have a declaration to make:

It is morally improper to encourage someone to BUY MY CHRISTMAS PRESENT BEFORE MY BIRTHDAY PRESENT!!! The length of time it takes people to shop for the holidays nowadays is so very, very wrong…

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Celebrate good times, come on!

I’d like to wish Porter and Marie a Happy Zero-th Anniversary and Casie a [CENSORED]th birthday!

Michael “Porter” Porter and Marie Johnston got married yesterday, which was one of the coolest weddings I’ve ever been to (and not just because I got to guard the guest book…). Why, you might ask? Well, if you did just ask, I didn’t hear you, but I’ll provide a Top 10 list of answers regardless:

1) It was held at the Science Museum of Minnesota, though we didn’t take pictures next to the dinosaur skeletons or the Bodyworks exhibit. For those who have never heard of Bodyworks, it’s an exhibit where dead people have had plastic stuff injected into their circulatory system or muscles or other aspects of the body, then everything else got removed. It might look like a sculpture of a bunch of arteries and veins, but there used to be flesh and bone surrounding them. (If I’m not doing the exhibit justice, well, that’s because we didn’t get to take wedding photos in there.)

2) We all had designated seats for dinner and each table was identified by a certain element. For example, there was tungsten, platinum and silicon (which some people kept calling “silicone”, thus providing a little insight into America’s obsession with boobs).

3) My designated seat at the tungsten table was between two hot chicks! Hell, yeah…

4) It was an M & M wedding. That’s not meant to refer to their first names both starting with M, though it’s an interesting coincidence. Maybe that’s why they fell in love, I dunno… But the “M & M” signifies a marriage between two members of Mensa, which helps explain the Science Museum, the elemental tables, etc.

5) Even though it was an M & M wedding, all of the places at the dining tables had a box of Nerds candy with a “thank you” note on the back and the little characters on the front wearing tuxes and wedding gowns.

6) The ceremony was performed by St. Toby, a local member of Mensa.

7) St. Toby concluded the ceremony with something to the effect of “By the power vested in me by the Flying Spaghetti Monster…” The result was a lot of laughter from people in the know and probably a lot of confused look on all the other faces. For those who have never heard of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you can find more information on Wikipedia. The Kansas State Board of Education’s requirement for schools to teach intelligent design creationism along with evolution—it happened in 2005, swear to FSM—so someone developed a religion in protest that… well, you’ll have to read about it.

8 ) Dinner was very yummy. Very, very yummy.

9) The reception was entirely dance music, some of which included Young M.C., Vanilla Ice, M.C. Hammer… three cheers for the early 90s! (I wish that there were a few slow dances in there—I would have liked to dance with pretty much everyone except for Porter, ’cause he refuses to let me lead…) And yes, that means I did dance, but #10 provided a little extra incentive:

10) The DJ gave everyone glow sticks to dance with, so there are going to be plenty of good pictures with those things spinning around on the dance floor.

So after having such a good time, I’m wishing the best for Porter and Marie for many, many, many, many years and maybe a couple more for good measure.

As for Casie (pronounced KAY-see) Perry, it was her [CENSORED]th birthday! Way to get older!

We were supposed to have met at the museum to wander around for an hour or two, go see the Bodyworks exhibit before the ceremony started, but she was held hostage by her friends during a birthday brunch. Bastards… (I had to learn about stem cell research and nanotechnology without anyone to keep me company!) Plus my sunglasses fell out of my pocket, so I’ll have to head to the optometrist to get another pair of those. But someone recognized me from Beauty and the Geek, so the afternoon was up and down.

Overall, yesterday was a day of celebration and I hope it’ll be worthy of a big ol’ party from here on out. (Mental note to self: August 27th is now an anniversary, a birthday and a good day to reminisce about how cool glow sticks are…)