Birthday Post! And Etc.
I need to make some notes about my berfday! It was a rather significant one, after all. It's not every day you turn twenty-five and it's REALLY not every day that you do it on 11-11-11. I feel rather special because of it!
The actual birthday was on a Friday and at Mom's behest (no really) I skipped my Thursday classes and went home early. The drive down was largely uneventful, minus the fact that I got pulled over TWICE by highway patrol for speeding after not having ever been pulled over ONCE in the previous three years that I've been driving back and forth between Austin and Lubbock. The truly remarkable part was that both times I only got warnings instead of tickets. The second cop was actually visibly trying not to laugh as he gave me my second warning. It was like my birthday present from Texas law enforcement. Oh yeah, and this happened within about an hour of each other. It was epic times.
I got home in time to go see a musical with Mom. We saw South Pacific, which was okay but not great and generally just had a fun time being goofy together. I love spending time with her so much. I really wanted to sleep in the next morning, but ended up having to wake up and meet up with Dad to go to the Porsche dealership to go and get my car fixed at long last. I've been needing to get my seat fixed since summer and Dad wanted the experts to look at my tires and whatnot after the debacle surrounding The Michael Incident. Also, conveniently enough, he had to go pick up HIS car, which was there getting fixed as well, so it all worked out.
I met up with him at his place and we went up there and hung out for a bit since we are well known to the dudes who work up there. Dad had been driving the Tahoe, so he got his car and told me to take the Tahoe and go shop for a birthday present for myself since it would take a while for my car to be fixed and he had errands to run. Not being one to turn down an offer like that, I took the Tahoe and went down to South Congress with the intention of going into Maya, a jewelry store I like a lot, but after half an hour of fruitlessly trying to find a place to park, I finally said "fuck it" and went down to First to go see Noel at Texas Custom Boots, where Dad and I get our boots.
I went in there and actually found two pairs that I fell in love with, a pair of vintage 1980-81 pair of moray eel skin boots and a newer (but still used) pair of greyish boots with elaborate turquoise inlay. I asked him to hold them for me until I could get Dad to come and see if those were acceptable and then went back to his apartment to chill out until he was done and we could go get my car. I ended up spending an hour on his couch reading Lirael and half dozing with the sun shining on my tummy. It was a pretty fan-freaking-tastic way to spend an afternoon. After that, we got my car and I got to see a Fisker Karma, which is a totally electric car that they have programmed to make noises from Tron because cars have to make some kind of noise for the benefit of blind people. This led to a hilarious discussion about what noise we would have our cars make if we could pick. I think I voted for "Flight of the Valkyries" because I am an Apocalypse Now fan. Also a geek. Then Dad and I went back to the boot place and he got me both pairs as my birthday gift. ^^ I have sexy boots. Yay!
I went home after that and grabbed a shower and picked up Mom because we were meeting up with Dad, Kris, Alex and Trevor for my berfday dinner. I hadn't seen Trevor in about a year since he's been teaching English over in Taiwan, so I was looking forward to that. I had picked the Brick Oven as the place and Mom and I headed out and got there EXACTLY on time only to realize that there had been a communication error and that everyone else was at the other location. ^^:; So we went to the correct location and had a really nice time for dinner. I got an Italian sausage, portobello mushroom and artichoke heart pizza all to myself, and therefore was a happy Xan. There was some big group celebrating a birthday beside us and after they led the room in a happy birthday, Dad said "WAIT WE GOT ONE MORE!" and then the whole room sang happy birthday again for ME. ^^;; It was fun. They also had a huge German chocolate cake and gave us all pieces. It was very kind of them.
Saturday, Mom and I got up and had a nice breakfast and went to go see Tower Heist, the Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy comedy. It was all right, reasonably entertaining but not great. We met up with Alex for lunch at Jason's Deli and then the two of us headed off to the Fed Ex place to ask about the cost of shipping things to Japan Whole Foods to start putting together things for Operation Stacy Freak Out, as Mom so hilariously dubbed it. We had planned to put together a care box for her to serve as a combination birthday, Thanksgiving and Christmas gift because she has been homesick and whatnot.
Because she hasn't gotten the box yet and I don't want to ruin the surprise, I cannot talk about what we got here, but suffice to say that it was a lot of fun. Dad and Kris actually walked over from their place and hung out with us while we shopped. Dad decided that I needed soap (he is a very strange man) and vitamins, so he bought me some really nice handmade soap and some vitamins. ^^;;;;;; And a few other various things. As I said, he's a strange man.
After that, Dad went back to his place and Kris went with Mom and I to go bum around Anthropologie just for kicks. We wandered around and I actually found a top that will be good for Thanksgiving and stuff and a dress, which will be good for Christmas and graduation and an actual Graduation Party, should I have one. (Yegads!) Bree and I had made plans to hang out later, so she joined us there and the two of us hung out after Mom and Kris took off. We debated what to do for a bit before finally deciding to go back to my house so she could watch Alex play Skyrim and get some dinner. XD;;; So we did that, and it was a ton of fun. We went to Pei Wei that evening and she bought me dinner as a birthday treat, which was super sweet of her and we had a good time. I'm glad I got to see her!
Sunday was also quite uneventful. I don't remember a whole bunch except just packing up and driving back to Lubbock, so I'm going to assume that's more or less what I did. So it was a pretty good birthday weekend overall!
This week has been largely uneventful as well, except for I seem to have caught a cold on Thursday or Friday, which sucked. But I think I'm finally starting to feel a bit better, so hopefully I'll be right as rain by Thanksgiving. Oh, I went out and had a birthday-ish dinner with Adam, Sarah, Tarryn, Ashley, Jojo and Adam and Jojo's other housemate whom I had never met before. It was fun getting to just hang out with people! And on Friday I had a bit of a bro-date slash book exchange with an English buddy of mine who is also named Alex, so it was an oddly social week for me. She is very smart and we have similar yet WILDLY different tastes in books, so we sort of just sat down in our local dive pizza joint and talked literature for a few hours. It was really lovely.
Yesterday I went to the library and worked on doing research for my big annotated bibliography for my Drugs, Alcohol & Society class. We need fifteen sources and I left with eighteen, which I'm glad about. It feels good to have a few extra in case one of them doesn't work out. I'll have to try to read and do annotations for them over the break. We shall see if it happens.
As for today, I'm trying to study for my test over The Aeneid tomorrow, but considering that I just spent half an hour writing this entry, I'm not doing such a good job sticking to it. It's not MY fault that it's the most boring, tedious epic ever. Blargh.
Oh well, back to the salt mines!
The actual birthday was on a Friday and at Mom's behest (no really) I skipped my Thursday classes and went home early. The drive down was largely uneventful, minus the fact that I got pulled over TWICE by highway patrol for speeding after not having ever been pulled over ONCE in the previous three years that I've been driving back and forth between Austin and Lubbock. The truly remarkable part was that both times I only got warnings instead of tickets. The second cop was actually visibly trying not to laugh as he gave me my second warning. It was like my birthday present from Texas law enforcement. Oh yeah, and this happened within about an hour of each other. It was epic times.
I got home in time to go see a musical with Mom. We saw South Pacific, which was okay but not great and generally just had a fun time being goofy together. I love spending time with her so much. I really wanted to sleep in the next morning, but ended up having to wake up and meet up with Dad to go to the Porsche dealership to go and get my car fixed at long last. I've been needing to get my seat fixed since summer and Dad wanted the experts to look at my tires and whatnot after the debacle surrounding The Michael Incident. Also, conveniently enough, he had to go pick up HIS car, which was there getting fixed as well, so it all worked out.
I met up with him at his place and we went up there and hung out for a bit since we are well known to the dudes who work up there. Dad had been driving the Tahoe, so he got his car and told me to take the Tahoe and go shop for a birthday present for myself since it would take a while for my car to be fixed and he had errands to run. Not being one to turn down an offer like that, I took the Tahoe and went down to South Congress with the intention of going into Maya, a jewelry store I like a lot, but after half an hour of fruitlessly trying to find a place to park, I finally said "fuck it" and went down to First to go see Noel at Texas Custom Boots, where Dad and I get our boots.
I went in there and actually found two pairs that I fell in love with, a pair of vintage 1980-81 pair of moray eel skin boots and a newer (but still used) pair of greyish boots with elaborate turquoise inlay. I asked him to hold them for me until I could get Dad to come and see if those were acceptable and then went back to his apartment to chill out until he was done and we could go get my car. I ended up spending an hour on his couch reading Lirael and half dozing with the sun shining on my tummy. It was a pretty fan-freaking-tastic way to spend an afternoon. After that, we got my car and I got to see a Fisker Karma, which is a totally electric car that they have programmed to make noises from Tron because cars have to make some kind of noise for the benefit of blind people. This led to a hilarious discussion about what noise we would have our cars make if we could pick. I think I voted for "Flight of the Valkyries" because I am an Apocalypse Now fan. Also a geek. Then Dad and I went back to the boot place and he got me both pairs as my birthday gift. ^^ I have sexy boots. Yay!
I went home after that and grabbed a shower and picked up Mom because we were meeting up with Dad, Kris, Alex and Trevor for my berfday dinner. I hadn't seen Trevor in about a year since he's been teaching English over in Taiwan, so I was looking forward to that. I had picked the Brick Oven as the place and Mom and I headed out and got there EXACTLY on time only to realize that there had been a communication error and that everyone else was at the other location. ^^:; So we went to the correct location and had a really nice time for dinner. I got an Italian sausage, portobello mushroom and artichoke heart pizza all to myself, and therefore was a happy Xan. There was some big group celebrating a birthday beside us and after they led the room in a happy birthday, Dad said "WAIT WE GOT ONE MORE!" and then the whole room sang happy birthday again for ME. ^^;; It was fun. They also had a huge German chocolate cake and gave us all pieces. It was very kind of them.
Saturday, Mom and I got up and had a nice breakfast and went to go see Tower Heist, the Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy comedy. It was all right, reasonably entertaining but not great. We met up with Alex for lunch at Jason's Deli and then the two of us headed off to the Fed Ex place to ask about the cost of shipping things to Japan Whole Foods to start putting together things for Operation Stacy Freak Out, as Mom so hilariously dubbed it. We had planned to put together a care box for her to serve as a combination birthday, Thanksgiving and Christmas gift because she has been homesick and whatnot.
Because she hasn't gotten the box yet and I don't want to ruin the surprise, I cannot talk about what we got here, but suffice to say that it was a lot of fun. Dad and Kris actually walked over from their place and hung out with us while we shopped. Dad decided that I needed soap (he is a very strange man) and vitamins, so he bought me some really nice handmade soap and some vitamins. ^^;;;;;; And a few other various things. As I said, he's a strange man.
After that, Dad went back to his place and Kris went with Mom and I to go bum around Anthropologie just for kicks. We wandered around and I actually found a top that will be good for Thanksgiving and stuff and a dress, which will be good for Christmas and graduation and an actual Graduation Party, should I have one. (Yegads!) Bree and I had made plans to hang out later, so she joined us there and the two of us hung out after Mom and Kris took off. We debated what to do for a bit before finally deciding to go back to my house so she could watch Alex play Skyrim and get some dinner. XD;;; So we did that, and it was a ton of fun. We went to Pei Wei that evening and she bought me dinner as a birthday treat, which was super sweet of her and we had a good time. I'm glad I got to see her!
Sunday was also quite uneventful. I don't remember a whole bunch except just packing up and driving back to Lubbock, so I'm going to assume that's more or less what I did. So it was a pretty good birthday weekend overall!
This week has been largely uneventful as well, except for I seem to have caught a cold on Thursday or Friday, which sucked. But I think I'm finally starting to feel a bit better, so hopefully I'll be right as rain by Thanksgiving. Oh, I went out and had a birthday-ish dinner with Adam, Sarah, Tarryn, Ashley, Jojo and Adam and Jojo's other housemate whom I had never met before. It was fun getting to just hang out with people! And on Friday I had a bit of a bro-date slash book exchange with an English buddy of mine who is also named Alex, so it was an oddly social week for me. She is very smart and we have similar yet WILDLY different tastes in books, so we sort of just sat down in our local dive pizza joint and talked literature for a few hours. It was really lovely.
Yesterday I went to the library and worked on doing research for my big annotated bibliography for my Drugs, Alcohol & Society class. We need fifteen sources and I left with eighteen, which I'm glad about. It feels good to have a few extra in case one of them doesn't work out. I'll have to try to read and do annotations for them over the break. We shall see if it happens.
As for today, I'm trying to study for my test over The Aeneid tomorrow, but considering that I just spent half an hour writing this entry, I'm not doing such a good job sticking to it. It's not MY fault that it's the most boring, tedious epic ever. Blargh.
Oh well, back to the salt mines!