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This just in from my best roomie:

lenayue:

So I finally finished Laura’s birthday present. I’m only a few months late (her birthday is a bit after Halloween). But better late than never? … Right?

Anyhow, I made her a min-book called Things We Love: “Inspired by Kate Spade’s book of the same title, these pages are filled with things we love. While Kate’s book is a tribute to style and fashion, this one is a tribute to us. Happy birthday.”

Twenty-four

Despite my better judgment, I’ve done it.

I’ve moved from my early 20s to my mid 20s. My friend Beth (see No. 1 below) was kind enough to remind me that this age bracket jump is much better than moving from the late 20s to the early 30s. Yet, I know that I’ll blink; I’ll turn 30; I’ll think, “It seems like I just wrote that dang blog post about turning 24!”

Yesterday I wasn’t actually too shaken up about becoming another year older. I had a non-traditional birthday, but that’s what keeps life interesting.

Here’s my “By the Numbers: Birthday Edition.”

Highlights:

1. I ate a delicious brunch with my favorites at J. Christopher’s.

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2. I opened the presents I’ve been eyeing (and shaking every once in a while) for the past few days. I also learned that my mom and David’s mom have the exact same gift wrapping style. I had already torn apart the packaging around Donna’s gifts before Lena took out the camera, but you can basically envision this photo with bold tissue paper and know exactly what it looked like.

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3. Thanks Mom, Donna and David for the goodies. I’m one lucky girl (who obviously still opens presents like a toddler on Christmas morning).

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4. I loved the messages in my birthday cards from friends and family who are both near and far.

5. I racked up more than 100 birthday greetings on Facebook and Twitter.

6. I came down with one heck of a cold. Thanks for the birthday phone calls, friends. I apologize for sounding like a 90-year-old chain smoker on the other end of the line.

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7. I drank four cups of tea, three cups of coffee, one cup of hot chocolate, and dozens of glasses of water because my throat was super scratchy. I then became the most hydrated, dehydrated and rehydrated person in the world.

8. I was sought after by the retailers of shoes, clothing, food, coffee, sunglasses, books, cosmetics and DVD rentals. I liked getting a free DVD coupon for RedBox, but I will be broke if I go on a shopping spree big enough to claim all of my birthday “rewards.” 

9. I enjoyed a Reeses birthday pie at breakfast with my coworkers today because they know that peanut butter cups are the way to my heart. Any day. Any time.

10. I received a Coldstone ice cream birthday cake from Lena. We will enjoy eating the cake—as opposed to looking at it sit in the freezer—once my throat decides to tolerate foods cooler than room temperature. 

Goals inspired by my birthday:

11. I hope to eat healthier and more diverse food every year. I waited until I was 20 to eat vegetables. I imagine I still have some room left for improvement.

12. I want to see all 50 states before I turn 50. This goal is borrowed from my friend and coworker, Kristine, who flew out to Minneapolis this weekend to go on a road trip with her cousin to North and South Dakota. Somehow she lived in Rochester, MN, for a couple years and didn’t make the infamous trek out I-90 to South Dakota during that time.

The only states I have remaining are: Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Hawaii, Arkansas, Delaware, Kentucky and Rhode Island. It seems manageable to complete 15 states in the next 26 years.

13. I strive to run a half marathon. But not today. Or tomorrow. Or until I find a scary-looking person to chase me 13 miles.

14. I plan to practice the piano again and become fluent enough to pound out a couple songs from the Christmas carol songbook that’s hanging out in the closet of my childhood bedroom. I stopped taking piano lessons because they conflicted with volleyball practice in my schedule. That wasn’t my finest life choice.

15. I’m going to watch more movies. I always watch the same films over and over again, but there are so many great flicks I’ve yet to see.

16. I hope to travel to Asia and Africa.

17. I want to spend more time outdoors.

18. I will adopt a puppy. (Breathe, Cora. I’m not going to get one soon.) This dog might be impractical. It might shed. It might drool. It might snore. But it will most certainly be the cutest little bulldog you’ve ever seen…and I already know her name. 

19. I will never tell you the name for my future baby bulldog until it is sleeping in a basket in my kitchen.

20. I plan to buy a nice camera and learn how to take some really great photos.

21. I will volunteer frequently.

22. I will think positively.

23. I will act ambitiously.

24. And, I will finish this blog redesign. The timeline has gotten a little out of control!

A Proper Fiesta

A homemade fajita feast

PLUS

A decadent dark chocolate coconut pecan cake baked by yours truly

cake

PLUS

A quality chick flick

PLUS

A spa session with face masks and painted nails

mask

EQUALS

Lena’s Birthday!

Happy 23rd year, Ms. Yue. You’re the best little roomie a girl could ask for. Now you just need to age a little bit more quickly because there’s no way I’m turning 40 nearly a year before you!

Today is Cora’s birthday and I’m the one getting presents? Awesome. I think my new job will be pretty sweet considering I’m receiving gifts when I haven’t even started yet. I was chatting with the birthday girl earlier today about her celebrations and non-celebrations. Mr. Jones threw her a surprise party with friends, and she had some excitement on her Monday-not-so-fun-day even though she decided not to take the day off of work (another SCAD perk). I guess Harold is a pretty good hubby…he’s proactive, to say the least. Cora also got quite a few digital well-wishes. My sis was pretty surprised that by 3 p.m. this afternoon she’d received 34 happy birthday messages via Facebook. She says that last year she only had 10 total because her birthday fell on a weekend and people were busy doing things other than stalking Facebook. She said: Its kind of a like all those poor kids with birthdays in the summer. In elementary school they never got to bring treats to school on their birthdays, and it was harder to make it to their parties. I was always glad to have a Fall birthday. A) It meant being one of the oldest. B) It was still new and exciting. By May people are kind of over celebrating EVERYONES’ “special day.” I also took advantage of her Fall birthday when we were growing up. It was awesome to have a ride to school after she turned 16. However, it certainly was never a “free ride.” At the time, Cora drove my mom’s old ‘87 Pontiac 6000. Both the car and the sister were pretty ill-tempered in the morning and it was my obligation to start the reluctant Pontiac and scrape off the morning frost. (It was also my duty to lie to Cora about what time it was while she was getting ready. Had I told the truth, we would never have made it to school on time.) The car also had bald tires and Cora wasn’t exactly proficient in driving in the snow after her whopping one year of behind-the-wheel practice. When we would get stuck in the driveway, Cora would tell me to jump out and start pushing. Now, by using a simple mathematical equation we can decipher that I wasn’t nearly old enough to be pushing a family sedan. If Cora was 16 and I am four years younger (-4) then my combined 12 years and 100 pounds probably weren’t enough to budge the car. On a few occasions we managed to maneuver the car out of the driveway but all too often we gave it up for a lost cause. It’s a good thing Megan Samuelson also had a September birthday and a car so she could stop at the top of the driveway and save us from our distress. Cora’s glad that she was one of the older students in her grade, but I can’t help but wonder how differently the winter of ‘99 would have been if she hadn’t passed her license test. At the time I was just the little sis who kept her mouth shut when we were in the car…and later wowed my elementary pals with our morning adventures nearly every day.

Today is Cora’s birthday and I’m the one getting presents? Awesome.

I think my new job will be pretty sweet considering I’m receiving gifts when I haven’t even started yet.

I was chatting with the birthday girl earlier today about her celebrations and non-celebrations. Mr. Jones threw her a surprise party with friends, and she had some excitement on her Monday-not-so-fun-day even though she decided not to take the day off of work (another SCAD perk). I guess Harold is a pretty good hubby…he’s proactive, to say the least.

Cora also got quite a few digital well-wishes. My sis was pretty surprised that by 3 p.m. this afternoon she’d received 34 happy birthday messages via Facebook. She says that last year she only had 10 total because her birthday fell on a weekend and people were busy doing things other than stalking Facebook. She said:

Its kind of a like all those poor kids with birthdays in the summer. In elementary school they never got to bring treats to school on their birthdays, and it was harder to make it to their parties. I was always glad to have a Fall birthday. A) It meant being one of the oldest. B) It was still new and exciting. By May people are kind of over celebrating EVERYONES’ “special day.”

I also took advantage of her Fall birthday when we were growing up. It was awesome to have a ride to school after she turned 16. However, it certainly was never a “free ride.”

At the time, Cora drove my mom’s old ‘87 Pontiac 6000. Both the car and the sister were pretty ill-tempered in the morning and it was my obligation to start the reluctant Pontiac and scrape off the morning frost. (It was also my duty to lie to Cora about what time it was while she was getting ready. Had I told the truth, we would never have made it to school on time.)

The car also had bald tires and Cora wasn’t exactly proficient in driving in the snow after her whopping one year of behind-the-wheel practice. When we would get stuck in the driveway, Cora would tell me to jump out and start pushing.

Now, by using a simple mathematical equation we can decipher that I wasn’t nearly old enough to be pushing a family sedan.

If Cora was 16 and I am four years younger (-4) then my combined 12 years and 100 pounds probably weren’t enough to budge the car. On a few occasions we managed to maneuver the car out of the driveway but all too often we gave it up for a lost cause. It’s a good thing Megan Samuelson also had a September birthday and a car so she could stop at the top of the driveway and save us from our distress.

Cora’s glad that she was one of the older students in her grade, but I can’t help but wonder how differently the winter of ‘99 would have been if she hadn’t passed her license test. At the time I was just the little sis who kept her mouth shut when we were in the car…and later wowed my elementary pals with our morning adventures nearly every day.


Happy Super-Belated Birthday Mom! I spent part of this evening organizing files on my computer before I backed up its hard drive. I found this photo in a folder that was (for obvious reasons) titled “Miscellaneous.”  I know that I snapped the picture on my last day of work at Ithaca College which was a few weeks after May 6th. A coworker of mine showed his or her enthusiasm for the odd message by pinning it up on the cork board that normally houses schedules, event listings, and contact information. I couldn’t help but immortalize the message further in the blog-o-sphere since the date is also my mom’s birthday. I just shouted out, “Look what I’m posting for you!” and my mom said woefully, “I don’t want THAT associated with my birthday!” I can see why she’s objecting. Usually when I think of zen, words like “ohm” “karma” or “meditation” come to mind. I just didn’t know that Japanese Buddhists were gutsy enough to use four-letter words. 

Happy Super-Belated Birthday Mom!

I spent part of this evening organizing files on my computer before I backed up its hard drive. I found this photo in a folder that was (for obvious reasons) titled “Miscellaneous.”  I know that I snapped the picture on my last day of work at Ithaca College which was a few weeks after May 6th. A coworker of mine showed his or her enthusiasm for the odd message by pinning it up on the cork board that normally houses schedules, event listings, and contact information.

I couldn’t help but immortalize the message further in the blog-o-sphere since the date is also my mom’s birthday. I just shouted out, “Look what I’m posting for you!” and my mom said woefully, “I don’t want THAT associated with my birthday!”

I can see why she’s objecting. Usually when I think of zen, words like “ohm” “karma” or “meditation” come to mind. I just didn’t know that Japanese Buddhists were gutsy enough to use four-letter words. 

When it rains, it pours.

Last night was one for the ages — age 22, to be precise. 

Yesterday was my friend Lily’s birthday and she planned a celebration to bring together friends from college and those of us who’ve known her a little longer. (I’m going to use this opportunity to boast that there’s written report card documentation that “Laura and Lily played together very nice” in preschool.)

Our game plan for the evening was to carpool up to a restaurant in the suburbs with awesome food and an even more impressive outdoor bar, wear the clothes and heels that are too cute for Cannon, have a lovely time, and see if five eligible bachelors just happened to want to chat it up a bit.

Well, as I actually said aloud late into the evening, it was quite possibly the best-planned and most poorly executed birthday ever.

To start off the night, Kaitlin, Lily, and I piled into my car and were just about to leave town when Lily mentioned that her parents were concerned about the weather. At this point, I had no idea that the weather was supposed to turn bad. The sky was still blue, and I told the girls that my parents were both out of town for the evening and that we shouldn’t let a little thunderstorm ruin our plans. On top of that, I would’ve had a severely bruised ego if my parents were out carousing and I was sitting home afraid of a few raindrops.

We started up toward the restaurant and a few miles from town saw an enormous wall cloud — also known as a giant ominous black blob in the sky — and started to have doubts. The weather certainly didn’t look good, but I thought it was just going to be a little rain. I was also a little cocky thinking to myself that I’d survived rush hour traffic in Los Angeles and I’d driven the country end to end. How bad could it possibly be?

The answer was pretty darn bad.

We got half way to the restaurant when the weather turned from a dreary evening to a typhoon. When I could no longer see the road, I pulled off the highway and under an overpass where my car was still being pelted with rain because it was so windy the sheets were coming down and then swirling horizontally like the power rinse cycle at a car wash. I’m known to exaggerate for the sake of humor on this blog, but I am not embellishing this story at all.

Kaitlin had sister-turned-meteorologist Megan on the phone for advice about which way the storm was moving and if we could expect to be actors in a re-make of Twister. We learned that it was only going to get worse if we kept driving up to the metro area and decided to turn for home. On the drive back I called my dad when we pulled under overpass #2 to see what the weather was like at home. “Uhh, the wind’s starting to pick up a little bit I guess,” he said nonchalantly. “IT’S NOT RAINING?” I demanded.

As it turns out, my hometown stayed in a little pocket of awesomeness as the rest of the state was obliterated with storms. When I was on the phone with my dad I mentioned that we were coming back to our house to wait out the storm and suggested that he make us a pitcher of margaritas to try to salvage something about the evening. He took my plea to heart and had the blender on the counter by the time we pulled into the garage. Hooray!

After sipping and chatting for a bit my dad pulled up the radar on his trusty Ag Partners website (who really needs weather.com when you can see the storm and grain prices simultaneously) and concluded that the cell had passed over us.

We were off again: this time going straight west to Northfield where we were certain the weather had cleared up. We had a simple meal and a few drinks at Applebee’s and saw tons of high school or first year college students come to the restaurant for half-price appetizers. We felt a little funny each time a group of guys had a lingering glance in our direction. Must they be so young? Must we be so old?

As we were leaving, an especially rambunctious group of Raiders catcalled us in the parking lot.

“Oh great,” I said. “We just got hit on by pre-pubescents.”

“In a minivan no less!” Kaitlin added with a laugh as we jumped into her car and started a lazy drive back to Cannon Falls.

While we were cruising home, we heard Standing Outside the Fire by Garth Brooks on the radio. I have a soft spot in my heart for the man with friends in low places. My mom had his tapes while I was growing up. I would dance/tumble/flail to his music in our living room around the age that I was playing with Lily at preschool. As much as I like the song we heard, I think When the Thunder Rolls would have been more appropriate.

When I walked in my door at the end of the evening I was surprised to see that my parents were still awake. I heard about my mom’s “Girls Night Out” adventure with her friends in Red Wing and learned that they just ignored the tornado sirens as when they went off. I saw a goofy photo she took with a “Handsome Hunk” who was giving away prizes as part of the event.

My dad also recalled his evening for my mom. “I’ve been entertaining girls all night,” he pronounced with a smirk. “You only had one hunk. I had an entire room full of girls.”

“Young pretty ones at that,” my mom said with a laugh.

I agree. We are young ones and as far as I’m concerned, Lily is still 21 because yesterday calls for a birthday re-do.