Letter Never Sent

Saturday I officially turned 28 years old. Thank you to everyone who helped me celebrate. I was surprised and humbled that so many people remembered. I’m very lucky to know such great and caring people. I hope I can return the favor. 

High points of the celebratory weekend. I’ll post some photos later:

• Dinner with my mom’s family on Friday at Rosie’s Tamale House. As you can tell by the name, it’s not a chic restaurant, but I like the quiet, intimate atmosphere, as well as the people who run the place who always remember what we usually order. I might have gone somewhere else had I known their birthday celebration tradition.

  When it was time to sing “Happy Birthday” they brought out the cheesecake my mom had made and… a giant red sombrero. I had to wear the giant red sombrero while the Rosie’s waitstaff and owners sang and beat pots and pans. My face turned the same color as the sombrero as soon as I realized what was going to happen. I felt completely ridiculous.

  

• Saturday Jody and I had a nice lunch with my dad and Kathy at Fran’s. We had a nice conversation and he was in good spirits making jokes about all the crazy stuff he has bought off eBay. He’ll be flying to Pennsylvania soon to pick up a car he bought. I think that’s insane. He has a birthday soon, so I’ll be seeing him in another week or two. During lunch Breen called from San Francisco to wish me a happy b-day. He and Sarah are kicking butt out there and I know everyone here misses the heck out of them.  
• Phillip and Courtney called while I was at Walgreen’s and serenaded me. I could not stop laughing. Later that night, Scott and Gloria took me and Jody out to dinner at Shady Grove with Sab, Phillip, and Courtney in attendance. We all got to share a huge piece of oreo ice-cream cake with seven iced-tea spoons.
• Sunday we attended a suprise party for my step-dad’s 50th birthday out at my mom’s place. Tons of people showed up and it was a lot of fun. While walking through the pecan orchard, my grandpa told this story about how his father used to put steel traps on top of fence posts to catch chicken-eating hawks and the occasional unlucky buzzard. Apparently, you didn’t need to bait the trap as hawks just like to perch on anything high off the ground. He said his father would make little bells he would tie around the buzzard’s leg, so it would jingle when he released it and it flew away. No reason, just for fun. Grandpa also said whenever his dad would find a turtle he would carve his name and the date into its shell before he let it go. People would call him up and say, “Hey, I found one of your turtles.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 3rd, 2005 at 9:50 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.