My Birthdaycation!

[Jester]

I am often amused by people who celebrate their "birthday month." But this year, I seem to be doing just that. Check out the schedule of events in my life for the next couple weeks. It's.....interesting, even by my standards.

Today: Day off, do nothing, do something, get stuff done around the house, drink....dunno yet. For now, going to watch some DVR shit and crash out for a bit.

Monday: Day off, as I have been hired to perform magic at the local high school's prom. Yes, seriously. Yay me. Not sure what I'm going to do during the day, though.

Tuesday: Day off, as I have a cookoff, and am going to try to make paella for the first time ever.

Wednesday: Day off, as it's my birthday. Beyond the sushi dinner that we do every year, and of course much drinking downtown, no idea what I'm gonna do.

Thursday: Day off, as it's the day after my birthday, and generally speaking, I'm in no shape to work. I am a drinker, after all. But in addition to recovering, I will be in the kitchen making my award-winning chili. See below.

Friday: Actually working my normal scheduled shift. Shocking.

Saturday: Day off, as per my normal schedule. Going to a going away party for a couple who are friends of mine and moving far, far away from here. They specifically requested that I make my chili for the party. How do you say know to THAT?

Sunday: Day off, as per my normal schedule. A friend of mine and myself, and a friend of his, are road-tripping up to Miami to attend the Diamondbacks-Marlins game. GO D-BACKS!

Monday & Tuesday: Working, as per my normal schedule.

Wednesday: Road-tripping up to West Palm Beach with another friend of mine to attend the Heart & Def Leppart concert. Heart is my favorite band, who I have seen four times (3 times as Heart, once as their off-shoot band, The Lovemongers), and I don't know how many more chances I'll have to see them, so this is my birthday present to myself. Since it is about a 5 hour drive, we are staying the night.

Thursday: Putz around on the mainland, eventually returning home to Key West.

Friday: Go back to what passes for normalcy in my life.

Whew! I'm exhausted just talking about it!

[Bella_Vixen]

Pointless to say, but...

Have fun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Jester]

That is never pointless to say! And thank you.

And yes, of course I'm going to have fun, but the thoughts are still appreciated.

Honestly, not all is perfect. If the going away party was another day, for example, I could actually go up to Miami on Saturday and catch both the Saturday night 7:00 game and the Sunday 1:00 afternoon game. As it is, I get to go to a going away party where there will presumably be much drinking, party with my friends, then somehow manage to wake up early in the morning and get on the road. Of course, the good news in that is that my friend's friend, who really doesn't drink all that much, will be doing the driving, and my friend and I will be able to drink to our hearts' content, and safely, and all of us get to have fun at the baseball game.

Should be an amusing couple of weeks!

[sms001]

Picked a good time to be born Jester - the D-backs are on fire, and don't show signs of slowing down. Hope it's a good contest.
Haven't been to West Palm in a couple of years, as my 'spring training' partner now lives in....Scottsdale. Hard to justify both of us flying a thousand miles when he has four stadiums in his backyard. Can't have changed too much though - fun town to jump around in. I'm sure it'll be a blast.
Happy birthday, and enjoy.

[MoonCat]

Have fun and in case I forget, Have a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

We want a report on that Heart concert, by the way!

[Jester]

I can probably do the report on the concert right now. Let me give it a try. Ahem....

"Oh my god, it was awesome! Def Leppard was great, but it was so cool seeing Ann and Nancy on stage again! And my friend, who is a big fan of Heart, was blown away to see them live for the first time. Holy hell mother of Jehosephat, that was a kick ass time! I had to have three beers afterwards just to calm down!"

What? I have seen the girls FOUR times before, ya know. They ARE my favorite band, ya know.

But yeah, I'll report in at some point. Don't I always?

I am hoping that, in addition to their new stuff and old classics, that they do "Love Alive," "Back to Avalon," and if I'm really lucky, "Dream of the Archer." Those of you unfamiliar with the greatness of Heart might want to check out those songs on youtube, or your favorite music-listening website. (And speaking of that, is there any audio-only youtube-like site? I could give two flying panda shits about the videos that go with these songs, to be perfectly honest.)

By the way, for those of you who were wondering, I did pretty much jack shit today, other than helping my roommate find and purchase a bicycle for transportation. I was there for the bicycle expertise, and when the seller told us the price for the bike in question, I flat out told my roommate that it wasn't worth it. Because, well, it wasn't it. And we got the price knocked down to just five dollars over what I said I would pay for it. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. But yeah, other than that, I've done fuck all today....pretty much fucked around on the computer and watched tv. And have had only one beer....which I am about to correct momentarily. But the real bonus is that the only money I spent all day was a few bucks at Subway for lunch, and a few more at a bar for a beer and a lottery ticket while said roommate was doing some shopping for bike accessories. Yeah, yeah, I know....lottery's are a joke. But the occasional dollar here and there, why not? And besides, the drawing is on my birthday, so how could I NOT take a shot? (If I win, I am throwing one killer party!)

[42_42_42]

Happy Birthday Jester!

[BookstoreEscapee]

Well, I am off work this whole week, so we will call it celebrating your birthday.

[MoonCat]

Hey, there's an idea! We could call this "Jester's Birthday Week" and party every day. Hell, I better get busy, this means I'm already behind by two parties...

You can listen to songs on Rhapsody and Grooveshark. Rhapsody allows a certain number of songs free per month. I don't think there's a limit at Grooveshark. But I don't know if they have songs by Heart. Can't hurt to check it out. I'm sure there are other sites, too.

[Jester]

Any music site that doesn't have songs by Heart is a music site that doesn't have me as a listener. I mean, come on, it's not like my favorite band is some obscure never-heard-of group out of Kenosha, Wisconsin or anything.

[Jester]

Interesting day before.

As I mentioned earlier, today I was all about the cookoff, and about making paella for the first time ever.

My plan was simple: at some point over the weekend, or at worst yesterday during the day, to do some online research, put together a recipe, hit the grocery store, and be ready to start prepping and cooking at a decent hour today, and be absolutely ready for the 7:00 cookoff.

That was the plan.

I am not known for being too good at sticking to plans. And as plans go, this one went. Right out the window, off the balcony, and shattering into a thousand pieces on the sidewalk below.

What ACTUALLY happened was I didn't do shit towards this over the weekend or yesterday, other than checking out a couple online recipes. That's it. Then today came, and I woke up around, say, 10:30 or so. Okay, no problem, still plenty of time, right?

Sure there was. Which is why I sat around doing jack shit, watching tv and putzing about on the computer. Until about, say, 1:00, when I started to realize I needed to get moving. So I actually started to do some research, found some stuff that worked, and made up my grocery list. And then played Minesweeper for about half an hour.

I really can't make this shit up.

Finally, I set off for the grocery store around 2. Found everything I needed (except one item), made a couple of adjustments on the fly, and even picked up some lunch and some stuff for the chili I'm making on Thursday. Then went to another grocery store to get the one item I couldn't find at the first one. Finally got home around 3:30.

Did I mention that the cookoff was at 7?

So, sat down, ate my lunch, studied the recipe I had, made some notes about how I was going to do this, stayed calm (I used to freak out in this kind of situation), and started in on my prep work. Which included cracking open a bottle of beer. For once I wasn't procrastinating, though....I drank the beer AS I did my prep.

Part of my prep was cooking my mussels. First time I've ever cooked mussels. And I realized just how creepy cooking mussels really is. For those who have done it, you know what I'm talking about. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, trust me, you really don't want to.

Before I had even gotten the mussels on the stove, while I was still sorting through the cold mussels, my roommate Mr. Anti-Social came out of his cave room and asked me what the hell I was doing, and why it smelled of bad raw fish. (It didn't...I smelled the mussels, and they smelled just as they should have...like the briney ocean from whence they'd come.) I explained what I was making, and he nodded dubiously, vocally suggesting that he might not go to the cookoff after all, free food or not, as this shit looked scary to him.

In any case, prep was going fine until I got to the fargin' shrimp. Shelling and deveining shrimp is a tedious process, and it just slows me down. Good thing I decided to skip the squid and just use more mussels, as squid is even more of a pain in the ass to clean. I finally finished prep at about 5:20.

7:00 was looming large. And some recipes of paella call for cooking it for HOURS. Luckily for me, this was NOT one of those recipes.

Once prep was done, things started flying. (I'm a pretty good cook and know what I'm doing, but I am damn slow with prep.) Finally got the paella done at right around 6:30. At which point Mr. Anti-Social again appeared, commenting on how great it smelled, how good it looked, and oh yeah, he was gonna go after all. Fine--he could carry my damn hot plate. Anyway, transplanted the paella from the cooking vessel to a disposable pan with a lid, grabbed a serving spoon, and with Mr. Anti-Social in tow, out the door we went, loading up the truck, and firing off the afterburners in the direction of downtown.

We pulled up to the bar literally right at around 7. Unlike last time, there is now legal parking right in front of said bar (paid legal parking, but legal parking nonetheless), so we parked there and unloaded, and I was surprised to see that I was one of the first ones there. But shortly everyone else showed up, and it was fun.

And while I liked what I did with my first draft of the dish, it definitely could use some improvement (more seasoning and some peas, for example), but overall, I was damn happy with it.

And Mr. Anti-Social made an astute observation. While people seemed to really enjoy my dish (it was almost completely gone by the time we left), a lot of them were still voting for their friends. (This is one of those fund-raising type cookoffs, where you can vote as often as you want, and each vote costs a few bucks.) I never vote more than once, and actually ask my friends to vote what they think are the best three dishes, whether or not mine is one of them. So I was not shocked to see that I didn't place, although Mr. Anti-Social was. Eh. Whatever. I know I did well. But we were both shocked not just by the winning dish, which neither of us were all that impressed with, but by the fact that this one dessert dish, which we were blown away by, did not even place. Hell, it was so good, I voted for it over my OWN dish.

But whatever. A fun pre-birthday day. Had several glasses of sangria, and then came home and did.....nothing but more laying around, watching tv, and futzing around on the computer. Which I most certainly will NOT be doing tomorrow, so it's all good.

And now, it's 4 am, I don't have to wake up at any particular time tomorrow, so I am going to enjoy just one beer (I have not had a beer since I was cooking the paella, nor any alcoholic drink since I left the cookoff), before I crash.

Of course, the beer in question is a 25 ounce bottle and is 10.5% alcohol by volume....but it's still just ONE beer.



(Thanks for letting me ramble about pretty much nothing, by the way.)

[monolayth]

Hope you are enjoying your birthday.

[tollbaby]

Any music site that doesn't have songs by Heart is a music site that doesn't have me as a listener. I mean, come on, it's not like my favorite band is some obscure never-heard-of group out of Kenosha, Wisconsin or anything.

And what's wrong with Kenosha, Wisconsin? (that's the next town over from where the boyfriend lives).

Last.fm isn't a bad site for finding music. Heart has played here five times in the last three years... ever want to catch them on the fly, they're usually here (Ottawa, Canada).

Ok, having now read your "after" post, I must try to EAT, if not COOK paella.... (This is why when I'm pressed for time, I buy my shrimp de-veined if not shelled outright!)

[Jester]

Hope you are enjoying your birthday.

So far, so good, though I have not done shit. Just staying in so far, but currently enjoying a Weihenstephaner Korbinian, one of the greatest beers ever, and after that, gonna shower, get dressed, and go downtown to see what trouble I can find between now and dinner.

And what's wrong with Kenosha, Wisconsin?

Not a damn thing is wrong with it, as far as I know, though I have never been there. That being said, can you name any famous bands from there?

I rest my case.

Last.fm isn't a bad site for finding music. Heart has played here five times in the last three years... ever want to catch them on the fly, they're usually here (Ottawa, Canada).

I'll stick to driving to West Palm Beach, thank you very much. (They're also playing two days later in Tampa.) Much easier than flying all the way to Canada. Besides, not sure if that country would even let me in.

Ok, having now read your "after" post, I must try to EAT, if not COOK paella.... (This is why when I'm pressed for time, I buy my shrimp de-veined if not shelled outright!)

I love paella, and done right, it is an extraordinary dish, among my favorites. Sadly, it is rare to find it at a restaurant.

As for getting the shrimp de-veined or de-shelled, they were not available in that form at the store I was at, unless I wanted them small and pre-cooked (and I wanted them neither of those), and I was kind of in a time crunch. Besides, these shrimp were FRESH Key West Pinks. And that is a great thing!

[Jester]

Well, shit.

First bad thing for my birthday happened. Cute girl who I've been drooling over for months, who actually is now a coworker of mine, rather than just a regular at The Bar as she was, who was GOING to come out to dinner with us, just told me that now she won't be able to make it, but maybe she'll see me out and about. Translation: I probably won't see her at all.

Well, poo.

Okay, enough self-pity....back to the beer!