Writing

Happy Birthday, John!

We got all dressed up and went to The Pine Club for dinner and ate buttery, melt-in-your-mouth, steaks and drank some delicious red wine.

John and sparklers

Holidays can make birthdays fun… if you were born near the “right” holiday.

Corn dogs and cheeze fries, funnel cake, and explosions, oh my!

For all that I can be a bit down on Dayton every now and then, they do patriotism right on the 4th.  Which means a big street fair and fireworks show on or near the 4th.  The downtown show was on the 3rd this year, so we headed out with plenty of time to wander around the packed and cordoned-off streets, and stand in long lines for delicious and terribly bad for us food.  The cheeze fries were a bit of a disappointment, but the corn dogs and funnel cake were delicious.  My biggest complaint was how the organizers of the fair handled making sure people had something to drink.  The food vendors couldn’t sell beverages.  If you wanted something to drink, even if all you wanted was some bottled water, you had to go stand in line at one booth to buy drink coupons, and then you had to go and stand in another line at another booth to exchange the coupons for bottled water, or soda, or lemonade, or whatever.  Argh.  So, so, stupid… (Actually, the phrase that I used at the time was “this is so retarded”.)

Getting food and drink was about all that we could stand of the massive, seething, mass of humanity that had all piled downtown, so we headed over the bridge to secure a good viewing spot on the hill opposite the point where the fireworks are launched.

It was a good show as always.

All of the rest of the fireworks photos can be found on flickr.

We parked a little further out then we usually do, so we were able to get out and home much more quickly then ever before.  Not to self to remember for next year – a little extra walking to and from the car park equals a lot less time spent idling in neutral and waiting for someone to take pity and let you pull out of the lot and into the road.

On the 4th itself, oddly enough, we didn’t find a fireworks show anywhere close by, but then, we also didn’t look particularly hard either.  We played with sparklers and shot off bottle rockets in the backyard, and watched our neighbor’s mini-display from the back deck.

There will be more fireworks tonight in Centerville, at the high school.

Today is my birthday.

Today is also Mother’s Day.  34 years ago, I was born on Mother’s Day.  To this day, my Mom claims that I was the best (and the first) Mother’s Day present that she ever got.  You can imagine, that it is pretty hard to top that, when I am thinking about what I can get/do for her to mark the occasion.

I like to be pretty low-key about my birthday on normal years – I have never really been a “its my special day so lets have a party” sort of person – and since I am still recovering from the oral surgery, this year will be even more low-key then usual.  John and I are getting take-out and spending the rest of the day lounging around at home.

Later tonight we may float a tea light on a martini and call it a birthday cake.

Birthday presents?  John got me a gun for my birthday.  A Ruger 10-22 rifle with a special-order  PINK laminate stock.  It is flamingo pink.  It is awesome.  It is gorgeous.  I can’t wait to take it out to the range to shoot it. Everyone else at the range will have their big, serious, macho, guns, and I will have my pretty pink .22 rifle.

I have officially joined the (small, select) ranks of gun-owning liberal Democrats.

John does such an excellent job of finding the perfect presents.

Major food holidays are always interesting here at Casa VanRoekel.  Since we live fairly far from our families (4 hours drive, 5.5 hours drive, and 5 hours on a plane, respectively) we spend a decent amount of those holidays at home.

I don’t like to skimp on holiday food, so we often end up with a ridiculous amount of food for just two people.

Brunch:

• Hash browns (Hand grated by me.  Hand grating a potato sucks.)
• Eggs over easy
• Bacon

Dinner:

• Crown roast of lamb
• Scalloped potatoes
• Szechuan green beans

It was all delicious.

And the of course there was also paska, and kolache, and jelly beans, and chocolate eggs, and the chocolate rabbit that I got for John that had foot-long ears (because he mentioned that biting the ears off a chocolate rabbit was one of the best things about Easter), and rice krispie treats that we made with melted peeps.

Two days later, and I am still full.