And, celebrate we did! My birthday was exactly one week ago today and it was fabulous. My friends and family are so great. There was no way this day was going unnoticed!
Tuesday morning I arrived to school to find letters from my prized pupils. They were darling. For some reason, there was a Christmas theme, as they had all chosen either red or green paper to mount their birthday letters. Ironically, I love Christmas. I think they knew a.) I love my ducks (green) and b.) red is my favorite color. One of my coworkers brought me a delicious chocolate brownie with cream cheese frosting to enjoy. It was the perfect pick-me-up that afternoon! Some of the card highlights...
"I like that you can write really neatly."
"I think you are a nice teacher. You are a helpful teacher."
"Two things I really like about you are your funny, you have good handwriting and your cool." -math isn't really his thing.
"I hope your family and frends came to your birthday and you are nice to people."
"You're the best teacher I've met."
So funny! And the day was off to a great start....
In the afternoon, I was able to go see my Eugene hair lady who has been dying to put my hair up in pin curls. I love having curly hair! So, this was an extra special treat. It was an afternoon of relaxing and letting someone play with my hair. Truly pampered style! Following the hair biz, I thought I'd see if I could find a new pair of pants and a shirt. Look at me obeying limits...! So, I found a pair of pants and settled on a shirt, neither of which were fitting to wear to my party...oh well. Actually, I think I did end up wearing the pants. I love those pants, so cute, so comf. I also bought a pair of shoes, but that technically happened the weekend before my birthday and definitely seemed like more of a necessity than a want at the time...After the tour de shopping, I still had some time to kill before my birthday dinner, so I thought I'd go grab a quick manicure. This was horrendous! I mean...horrendous! First of all, I have one shop that I like to go to and I like it because the workers do not try to talk to you. They don't speak very good English and I rather prefer that. I like to go and sit in silence and relax, not worry about conversing with someone and coming up with things to talk about. Well, lo and behold, my shop has hired a completely caucasian looking girl who speaks fluent English and she was assigned to my manicure. Right away, as we sat down, she was ready to talk. You can imagine my disgruntled nature, but I played along and was trying to be nice, until she said, "Well, hm, I don't really know what to talk about. I know some pretty good kid jokes." Oh, Lord. Please no. And there she goes, "What do you get when you cross a dog and a centipede?" I don't even remember the answer because I have trauma blocked most of the experience. Additionally, some of you may recall how I vowed not to bite my nails since the beginning of January. I was doing a great job! I was liking the length of them and showed her about how long I wanted them, alluding to the fact that I wanted her to even them up. She immediately chopped...I mean, chopped, all of my nails off. There was nothing left. I almost cried. Why would you do that!? Besides that, I have about the smallest nail beds anyone has ever seen, so I thought she would keep them as long as possible. Oh, no, not this one. Off they go! Then, she painted what was the most ridiculous looking french tips I have ever seen. Clumpy, and not even. One nail looked great, and the next one looked nothing like that. Ugh. I waited the minimum amount of time for them to dry and got the heck out of there. By the time I got home, they were all smudged and I had to remove them immediately. Although I think my natural nail looked better than how she did them. I'm not surprised they were so smudged up because I had to race home to meet Chrissy and Cory for a drink. Cory was just dying to make me a Manhattan. I just know it. I changed and got ready and they made my drink. It was wonderful. That is some good service right there! Then, off to dinner we went.
I chose a dinner place called Kabuki's. It's a Japanese grill style restaurant where they come and perform a show cooking your meal at your table. The last time I went to one of these was with Joel, so I was super stoked to have a better memory to replace it with. All of my friends were there, Angie, Kevin, Logan, Erin, Chrissy, Cory, Sarah, Brandyn, Abe, Beth and Eileen. I had never hung out with Beth and Eileen yet, but I'm so glad they came, and hope they won't be so stand-off-ish in the future. I also hope they're reading this. The show was fairly fun, although for some reason our chef was super quiet and shy. He barely said two words, and it was kind of an awkward mix of people, so it was not as though we were real boisterous. Naturally, I tried to compensate by acting as if everything was a million times cooler than it really was. Every flaming volcano, I squealed. Ever big flame, I giggled with glee. I know I was making it a big deal. Then, suddenly I had rice flying my direction and I had to quickly catch it with my mouth. I did. Now that really was a big deal, because I've never been able to do that before. I usually freeze and get stage fright and can't do anything. Not this time. Oh no. I rocked that rice catching. My friends spoiled me to death with cards and gifts and I couldn't have loved it any more! After dinner, we sat around chit chatting, and some people began to disperse. I was a little unsure of what we were doing because I thought Sarah had got me a cake. But, I didn't want to be rude, and say, "Hey, where's my cake?" So, we sat and enjoyed each other's company some more. Finally, a worker at the restaurant came up to us and informed us that we could stay and hang out in the lounge but they needed our table. Rude! Of course, we hurriedly packed up and everyone began asking me, "What do you want to do now?" "Are we just going to go home?" "Do you want to stay longer?" I was inundated with questions, and all I could think was, aren't we having cake? Finally, I mentioned something to Sarah's boyfriend and Sarah was like "Oh yeah! What the heck? They have our cake and they were trying to kick us out!" She got mad. We ended up having cake in the lounge and all worked out just fine. It was a damn good cake. Wow. That's wedding cake material right there! Afterwards, Chrissy and Cory brought me home and continued to have drinks. Finally, I had to be rude and kick them out because I needed to sleep. It's hard when you're getting old and your birthday is in the beginning of the week! Luckily, I had Seaside weekend to look forward to!
Friday could not come fast enough. I was so ready to hit the road, which made for the school day to be really long. We were out of town the minute the clock struck 4. Right on schedule. Things were lookin' up! Again, how lucky can I be? Sarah drove to Seaside, Friday after work, with a broken foot and all. That's friendship right there, folks! Erin did a bang up job on the party CD that we listened to approx. 25 times in the course of two nights and three days. The car ride seemed to go pretty quickly, and before I knew it, we were there! Marina and my sissy were there waiting for us! Perfect timing! Everything just seemed to be falling right into place. We got ourselves settled and got ready to hit the town for dinner. Here we hit our first minor snafu. Nothing is open at 8:30 pm in Seaside. Well, except the arcade. We went to our ol' standby, Norma's, and had a delicious dinner. I'm pleased to announce, I tried a real fish dish and it was delicious. Then, we paid our tabs and quickly headed for the Fascination alley. This is the whole reason why we go there, really. Naturally, they did not have the sweatshirts we have been saving our tickets for. Such a bummer. Then, they kicked us out of there at 10:30! Yeah, that's right we closed down the Fascination alley. We are that bad ass. Back to the hotel we went, for a riveting game of Loaded Questions and drinks. This game was pretty fun, and I think everyone had an enjoyable first evening. Saturday morning brought breakfast in the room, a workout, and then out on the town. We looked around at the shops, visited the candy store, whereupon I tried a little chocolate dipped bacon. It was okay, but I really thought it was almost too sweet. Hurt my tummy! Then, we were set to see what time BINGO would start that evening. We headed over to the church whereupon the devastating news was handed to us. Bingo has been moved to Friday nights. WHAT!?!? No bingo!?!? Agh! Ah, well, we still had lunch to look forward to. I was ready to munch down some Thai food so we headed over to the Thai restaurant, to find that it had closed down! What is going on, Seaside!? I was just at a complete loss by this time. I didn't know what to do next. I had no alternatives. I was at a complete loss. Luckily, I had plenty of other gals to take charge. We found a delicious lunch spot, actually, and the day was resurrected. We managed to get in a long soak in the hot tub that evening, and then got ready for dinner later that night. Dinner, wouldn't ya know it, turned into Karaoke and Karaoke turned into the best people watching on this planet, and people watching turned into a 1 am curfew. Wow. Seaside is so fascinating. We had an Asian man singing "Play that Funky Music" which was followed by this comment, "Hey, you were really good! Nice job! Ya know, I gotta tell ya something, more orientals sing that song...." Really? Did she just say that!? Only in Seaside. Then, we have this woman with possibly the largest boobs I have ever seen. It was decided they were definitely natural, but they were gigantic. I mean, very distracting. There were so many questions to be asked, and our table definitely asked them...of each other, of course, no we would never approach someone and talk to them. No. Never. Then, that gal left, and here came another couple, who quite frankly, I am still confused about why they left their house... They were ALL over each other. Literally, hands up the shirt, and so on. When we had arrived at this restaurant we asked to sit down in the "pit" which was a sunken area close to the fire pit. Marina went to go ask the servers, when suddenly two men were walking with Marina and very seriously saying, "Oh no, we do not sit people in the pit at this hour." "The pit is closed." Marina was looking at them in shock and awe and started laughing, asking, "Are you serious?" Their reply? "You wouldn't believe the things we've seen in the pit." Well, after watching a couple of opposite sexes attempt to go into the same bathroom, and with all of the other things I witnessed that night, I came to understand why exactly the pit remains closed during karaoke. And, then, Sarah fell asleep. We decided to go home.
You might be interested to know the restaurant Pudgy's bought the train place next door, and Girtle's. They're going to be turning it into a consolidated place, outdoor patio, music, you name it. It will be the premiere club on the Oregon coast. We heard this tale on three occasions from three different people that night.
Sunday morning brought a quick ping pong tournament. I invented a move. I guess? The girls were absolutely cracked up to tears about how I was holding the paddle. I won the tournament so maybe they should have tried it out! Jeanine took second, Sarah third? Erin, thanks for playin. :o) It was a great way to end our time together! Then, the part I hate, we packed up and got a bite to eat and were on the road. I hate saying goodbye to everyone and I hate leaving the coast.
Yet...it was the best girls trip to the coast....ever....
Today's list: Worries on my mind...
1. My job
2. President's Day weekend
3. Cleaning my house
4. Putting my christmas decorations away
5. Budgets
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