A Good Time Was Had By All, Or Me At Least, And That's What Matters

My weekend of birthday celebrations (Sunday is the big day) began last night with a long happy hour at Buffalo Billiards. BB is one of those places that I usually think I don't like, cuz it can be meat market-y and is extremely smoky, with only greasy bar food, and the bathrooms are pretty gross. But I have to admit, this was my own 2nd birthday celebration I've planned there, and I think I've had at least 5 or 6 other major events there in the past few years, including the eventful but ultimately heartbreaking 2004 Election Night. Even though I try to think of a different place whenever I plan something, I keep coming back to BB, and it actually is a pretty good place to get a bunch of people out for a beer and some laughs.

Oh, but before we got there, I got some birthday lovin' from a few select coworkers....a guy friend of mine totally surprised me with the gift of a BIG bottle of alcohol (happy!) and a gal pal gave me the greatest handmade card ever. She took a picture she had from a John Edwards event she'd been to, where he's speaking into a microphone, and added the captions to make it look like he was singing happy birthday to me, his girlfriend Stefanie. :-)

I had a really good turnout for the birthday HH, and I was glad so many people wanted to come spend some time with me. It's always a bit of a challenge, though, to blend the various different groups of friends. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But I've learned (therapy helped), that it's not always my job to be the appeaser, and my friends are all big boys and girls, and if they meet and don't actually like each other, it's not my job to make them become BFF's. I am glad they all make the effort to get along for my sake, cuz I certainly love them all for for the very different ways in who they are.

The evening ran from about 5:30 until 11ish, with a fun rotating cast of characters and lots of laughs. We all stuck with beer - a big change from my infamous chocolate martini birthday last year - and those greasy appetizers made several appearances. My verdict: cheesesticks, GOOD. unexpected/unordered cheese fries, GOOD. buffalo wings, disappointingly dry and with very little meat. Come on, a place called Buffalo Billiards needs to up the ante on those wings!

As the evening wound down, there was a growing chorus of "Krispy Kreme?" "Who wants donuts?" "Krispy Kreme?" So the final core group - me, T, Joyous, and the lovely couple from this blog - made our way across the street. But we were denied with a closed Krispy Kreme.... quick thinking, however, led us next door to Cosi for some S'mores and coffee cocktails. Mmmmm. Roasted marshmallows. A great wrap-up to the night.

I made it back to 16th Street at about 2 am, and 2 more fun developments to the evening.... I got a package of presents from the little bro, and he totally SCORED with being dead-on on getting me stuff that I wanted. The one CD and the one DVD that I've been coveting the most are now MINE! I gave him a quick call and had a good sister-brother catch-up convo. Then I logged on and, to my happy surprise, got to spend the last hour or so of the night IM'ing with this cool chick, who's STILL working in Yemen. She needs to come home soon! But it was a great way to wind down from the evening and cover every good girl-talk topic that needed to be discussed. I like this new routine we have - I go out and get home ridiculously late, but with the time difference she's sitting at her desk in Yemen looking for a fun diversion from back in the States. Good times!