BIRTHDAY!!!

After 48 hours of birthday goodness, I'm 30 by date in my time zone and time lived. Normally, I'm not a huge celebrator of my birthday. I enjoy it, but don't like getting carried away. It is really just one more excuse to gather a couple good friends up to hang out. Last year, I think I laid in bed because I had just had surgery on my finger.

This year, I was aiming for hanging out with a couple friends in the Coffee House on Monday, the 26th. I figured no one would be up for much more because we were coming off the holiday weekend (our first two day weekend of the season to celebrate Thanksgiving). However, the Coffee House is closed on Monday. Instead of declaring shenanigans or resigning myself to hanging out in my dorm room, I started plotting how I could get around this little hurdle. So Sunday morning, I started sniffing around and found out that I could rent out one of the three bars for a private party. The only one available was Southern Exposure, the smoking bar, which I wasn't interested in. I found out who had the Coffee House and Gallagher's and starting a full day of wheeling and dealing. The people in Gallagher's were willing to wrap up a little early and then let us in for a birthday party romp which gave me about 24 hours to get everything ready.

Lots of paperwork and shopping later, I had a party planned and some people to come out and play. It was a good, quiet time. Shuffleboard, pool, air hockey, Foosball, music, a video game machine with 20 old school arcade games on it, and about 25 people to play them all. Normally, all the games are hard to play because it is crowded, other people are playing, or there just isn't room. One guy game and set the high score on Ms. PacMac in one try. He said he was the champion of NE Alabama in his youth. The rest of us settled for lower scores and a long night of gaming and talking. I was home and getting ready for bed by midnight. When I got home, I got to see my birthday present from one of my roommates which was to decorate my side of the room. I didn't have anything up so he rectified that with the only thing he had - porn. Other people gave me coupons for massages, chatting, advice, special chocolate, a dozen fake mini-roses, and a fish magnet.

After another sleepless night, I was up for another tired day. Instead of getting birthday wishes from all over station they came pouring in over e-mail and facebook. Thanks to all of you who sent some love my way. I really appreciate it.

The goodness culminated after work about 6pm. After work, I headed home for a quick nap. My nap was interrupted by the mail room calling me to come and pick up my mail. They said to bring a friend to help and to get a taxi. Normally, they don't call but I apparently had SO much that it was taking up too much room. I had ELEVEN boxes. Apparently, all the mail that was sent 6 weeks ago or two weeks all came at once. It made my day. It made my night. It is going to make my week. Thank you all very much!!

All of my unopened mail in the hall outside my room.

After a quick trip to dinner and then down to the Coffee House for an Oregon Chai, I headed home to see what kind of goodies you guys had sent my way. I can't say how much fun it was to dig open and get so many ordinary items from home. It is amazing how the normal things from home mean so much more when you can't get them. It was interesting to see what ordinary items each person would choose to send as well.

My birthday presents!!!

In that pile of stuff, there was granola bars, rice, Thai Ramen, gummy fish, jelly bellies, a slinky, a penguin snuggle buddy, a CD of fabulous music, Oregon Chai, sour patch kids, trivia cards, candy and more candy, protein shake mix, unopened x-mas presents, a reading lamp, books, trail mix, girl scout cookies, and countless other yummies. On the walls, you can see I left up my roommates decorations. I'm excited that he did it because now I have thumbtacks to hang up my own pictures. We have thumbtacks all over base, I just haven't gotten any yet.

After a long winded late night fabulous call to Denver, I was closing out my b-day on the bottom of the world. Thanks to everyone who helped make it great. I slept better last night than I have any other night in a couple weeks.