Happy Birthday to ME! (Belated for YOU!)

Friday, January 21st was my berfday.  I'm on the cusp of mid-30's now.  Anyway, so here's how my day went. P.S. I find my posts are getting longer and longer.  Sorry, this is a long one.

Friday was the coldest day of the year, actually in almost 2 years. The official temperature at the airport was minus 16 degrees, however WAY up north on the border of Minnesota and Canada in International Falls it was minus 46 degrees. By the way, that's air temperature, peeps.  We're not even factoring in wind chill. If my birthday wasn't in January, I would definitely hate the month.

The plan for the day was simple.  I took the day off of work.  I hadn't done that for a birthday ever.  My  mom had asked me earlier in the week if I wanted to go out to breakfast, which I said yes.  I left my house, got in my car and nothing.  It didn't start despite it being in the garage.  My car has a history of not starting when it's really cold, even when it's not that cold due to the gas line.  I finally got it started after pumping the gas pedal like you're not supposed to do but all rules go out the window when it comes to this car.  I headed to my mom's and picked her up and we went to Perkins, her choice.

At first I thought, why Perkins?  It's so generic and we could go anywhere else for breakfast but she picked it so I went with it.  While we were waiting for our food to come, my mom gave me a card from her and my dad and a gift card, which covered the cost of a desk I've wanted for two years. Thank you parents!! Breakfast at Perkins was delicious. I had eggs benedict and they were great.

I asked my mom if she wanted to bum around with me as I wanted to go JC Penney's.  She said yes and so we went to the mall.  I had no interest in buying anything really but I did have a $10 reward thing that they sent me so I just thought I'd find something that caught my eye.  We spent a lot of time looking at jewelry and I ended up buying a pair of clearance earrings and a big huge cocktail type ring shaped like a flower.  Happy birthday to me.   After JCP, we went to Caribou Coffee.  I had a coupon for a free drink of choice on your birthday. We went through the drive thru and I ordered my "usual" decaf caramel high rise that I get probably two times a year.  At the window, they asked me my name and then the window person/barista sang Happy Birthday to me.

We went to JoAnn's after that and bummed around the store.  My mom got a bag of Christmas clearance stuff for $3 and I spent $18 on some items for the top of my new desk, which I would be getting on Saturday.
We ended our shopping excursion at Marshall's and I bought a fancy pen/pencil holder. I dropped my mom off about 3:15 pm and went home. I can't say I have the closest relationship with my mom so it was really important and special to me that she asked me to breakfast and spent the day with me.  It was a truly a great time.

M came home and gave me two cards.  One was a funny card, an iCarly card, which M didn't know who she was and if I didn't have a nephew, I probably wouldn't either but he bought it thinking it was funny that just some random teenager was on the front saying Happy Birthday to me, which makes it even funnier to me that he had no idea.  The other card was a lovey-dovey nice card that had a present in it. I'm not going to tell you what it was. It was very exciting to me and I'll blog about it soon.

We had no plans for my birthday evening, the way I kinda wanted it to be.  I just wanted to be low-key and hang out and maybe go eat somewhere casual.  We talked a little bit about where to go and I finally decided that Pizza Luce sounded good. Just before we were going to leave, our friend Sara messaged us on Facebook saying that she was sure we already had birthday plans but we didn't, First Avenue lets you in plus a guest on your birthday for free, even for sold out shows.  WHA?!?!?  This was the best news to me because it so happens there was a sold out show there that night and it was one that I wanted to go to.  Sara had said that First Avenue had just tweeted that info and so I looked to verify and yes, two hours prior, there was that glorious message on Twitter. And so we decided to go but we had to go quickly because it was already close to 6 pm at this point and we still needed to eat.

Despite how cold it was, it was snowing and it was pretty and fluffy and we went to downtown Minneapolis and found a meter across the street from Pizza Luce.  I got a small baked potato pizza.  If you haven't tried it, it's delicious. M got his signature pizza, smoked gouda and meatballs.

We parked over by First Avenue in the closest covered parking spot available to First Avenue.  Everything was going perfectly throughout the whole day.  I approached the doors of First Ave and went to a door where there was no line thinking, hey it's my birthday and I don't have to wait in line.  I asked, "Is this the birthday line?".  He didn't care it was my birthday and wondered why I was declaring this to him.  I said that I get get in free on my birthday and he had no idea what I was talking about.  He said go in the will call line and they probably have you on a list.  What list?  No one knows it's my birthday yet and so I got nervous that we wouldn't get in.  I got to the front of the line and told them it was my birthday and they wanted to see my ID so I showed them and they put us on a list and then said, "Make sure you go around the corner for your free birthday drink coupon".  Awesome!  I got my drink coupon and ordered a Summit Extra Pale Ale. If you haven't been to First Ave, most of their beers are big 24 oz. bottles so that's what I got for free!

I suppose I should tell you what show we were even at.  Have you heard of the radio station The Current?  It's a public radio station and I can say I'm proud to be a sustaining member of Minnesota Public Radio and I contribute funds every month to them.  Everyone knows I'm SUPER PROUD to be a member and I work in the words, "I'm a sustaining member of Minnesota Public Radio" into any conversation I can.  Ok, not really but I am really proud.  Well, it was the Current's 6th birthday/anniversary party and they had a great lineup of local artists performing throughout the night.  As a sustaining member, I could have purchased tickets to the show during a presale weeks ago but I didn't because they had only announced 3 of the 5 acts at that time and it was my birthday so I wasn't sure if that's what I wanted to do.  Of the 3 acts they announced....Cloud Cult, Free Energy and Jeremy Messersmith, Jeremy Messersmith was the only one I was interested in seeing.  It wasn't until after tickets were sold out did they announce the other two bands, Roma di Luna and Brother Ali.  Once Brother Ali was announced, that sealed the deal for me and I wish I would have purchased tickets.  I wanted to go but not for the Craig's List price of $50-$100 a ticket when they were only $12 to begin with.  Then in the week or so leading up to the show, the Current announced that they recorded a CD with all local artists in the Current Studios and each person attending the birthday party concert would get one.  That bummed me out more than anything because I really wanted that CD.  Fast forward to two days before the show and the Current announced that Cloud Cult had cancelled and they were replacing them with Trampled By Turtles. Now I was really jealous that I wasn't going to be able to go to the concert and only two days later, I'd be getting in the door for free, a large free beer in hand, collecting my Current CD and watching all the bands I wanted to see with a great view.  I just couldn't believe that everything worked out so perfectly!

In addition to the bands, a lot of the Current DJ's would come on stage and talk to the crowd and gave out their own awards with categories they made up and the winners included some of the artists that performed that night as well as Dessa and Mark Mallman.  Even Minneapolis's mayor, RT Rybak took the stage and talked to the crowd about the importance of public radio and supporting music and local stores like Electric Fetus.

Here's a summary of the bands that played:

Trampled By Turtles: AMAZING
Roma di Luna: Soulful but no stage presence- Only knew one song
Jeremy Messersmith: Knew every song and loved the performance
Brother Ali: Fantastic---Did a version of Eyedea & Abilities, "Smile" and he really got the crowd energized
Free Energy: Don't know who they are and left before they took the stage

Pizza Luce

Me and my giant Summit beer

The snowy view from the bathrooms at 1st Ave

Trampled by Turtles

Mpls mayor RT Rybak

Roma di Luna

Jeremy Messersmith

Brother Ali

On Saturday, we went to breakfast at one of our faves, Good Day Cafe and then went and bought the desk, put it together and here's a picture of it.  I love it!