Forty Niner

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I turned 49 last week. Not quite 50, but it’s a looming figure that’s no longer quite so distant. I didn’t write about it last weekend because I was busy the whole time. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, with basically little opportunity to sit down for a few hours to ruminate. But now I’m in an airplane returning from a client trip to DC, and I have nothing but time, and I can finish it any time after I land.

A Packed Day

Jen decided to plan a day of activities for my actual birthday on Friday. True to the tradition I adopted several years ago, I had dutifully taken the day off. I’m pretty low-key in general, so I was primarily curious about what she’d planned.

She presented me with a bag containing several envelopes and a rolled-up scroll proclaiming a quest. She’s been using OpenAI for various things recently, and since I’m not exactly forthcoming regarding my desires, it became a fount of potential ideas including this one. The first envelope suggested we begin our journey with a meal, so off we went.

Morning began with breakfast at the Original Pancake House in town. My boss from my stint at LeapFrog Online introduced me to this “not quite a chain” breakfast joint back in 2005, and I’ve been a fan ever since. I had my usual Meat Lover’s Scramble, and Jen and I both agreed that the portion was suspiciously larger than usual. Maybe it was Birthday Serendipity.

The next stop on our journey was The Cat’s Meow Cafe in search of creatures with extraordinary powers. It’s a cat cafe that recently relocated to a larger facility, and now boast an inventory of literally dozens of cats. We spent about an hour there, and while I wish we could adopt a couple of the cats we met there, it’s probably not a great idea while we still have Ursula. I ventured into the room where they keep cats that don’t enjoy the company of other cats, and met Nala. She was extremely happy to see me and I petted her for a while. Unfortunately, she became incredibly offended when I decided it was time to leave the room, and attacked me at the door. I really feel bad for the abandoned and jealous girl, but that one will have a hard time getting adopted. Eventually it was time to leave for the next stop on our journey. We waved goodbye to the kitties and left for our next stop.

The next envelope proclaimed a search for the chronicles of heroes and villains, which meant Graham Cracker Comics. I haven’t been there for a while because I don’t go downtown often. I didn’t find the latest collection of W0rldTr33 there, but I did pick up a copy of Dungeon Crawler Carl, an amusing romp where the world is destroyed by an intergalactic corporation, and it’s up to Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat Princess Donut to conquer a televised dungeon to save us all. I’ve been reading it online and was pleasantly surprised to see a published copy of volume one, so I snagged a copy to support the artist along with the local shop.

Then we moved on to The Garlic Press for some local shopping to see if I could find some snacks or at least some interesting gee-gaws. No such luck on the latter, but I found some unique chocolate that’s worth a try. Jen loaded up on popcorn, including some chai latte-flavored mix for Linda. Since it wasn’t yet time for dinner, we moved on to Barnes & Noble. I didn’t really find anything there by the time we had to leave, but I made some mental notes on what to check for on Saturday.

The penultimate envelope declared a feast, and so we traveled to Wesley’s Grill. There aren’t a ton of “good” steak places here in town, but I’d somehow stumbled across the menu for Wesley’s a few months ago and expressed an interest. I ended up ordering a surf-and-turf combo with crab, shrimp, and a thin wagyu fillet. Jen had an order of Wesley’s unique baked macaroni, which relied on a cheese topping rather than a sauce. My steak was almost great, but he added too much seasoning; a shame for such a high quality cut of meat. Still, I was suitably stuffed and we left for the next destination.

Our final stop ended up being the 8-Bit Beercade, where all non-pinball games are free with a drink purchase. I acquired a brew and wandered around the establishment in search of entertainment, only to find that nearly half of the games were out of order. Some were powered off, others had signs saying they were broken, and some that were still working had out-of-focus screens or semi-responsive controls. They had a MAME arcade emulation station, but it was hooked up to a badly calibrated CRT. The NES emulator had insanely laggy controls, and the N64 emulator had SNES controllers attached, making it literally unplayable. Jen and I played a couple rounds of pinball and decided to call it a night.

My reward for the quest was the journey itself, and that’s all I could really ask for. Jen did a bang-up job, especially since I gave her no ideas at all. At my age, what is left to ask for that I don’t already have? Her company for a day is all I need.

A Continuance

Saturday was basically meant to let me decide the schedule. It rained for most of my birthday, so mowing would have been inadvisable. Luckily it was dry almost all week before that, so the grass hadn’t grown much. Skipping a week was at least possible.

Either way, we woke up mercifully late and eventually went for lunch at the Kobe Revolving Sushi Bar. We’ve been there before, but it’s kind of expensive and Jen can’t eat much of their menu, so we don’t go often. I gorged myself on about a dozen plates of eel, tuna, avocado, and a couple items Jen snagged but didn’t enjoy. It also turns out their cheese wontons contain all of the allergens despite the name—luckily Jen didn’t have a full anaphylactic reaction.

Then we headed over to Dutch Bros for some excessively doctored-up “coffee” drinks. Jen loves the place, and I owed her at least that for suffering through the sushi joint. I opted for a zero sugar variant of their seasonal Caramel Pumpkin Brule, and Jen opted for her usual blended Caramelizer. It’s also in the same shopping center as PetSmart, and we were running low on litter. Convenient!

The last stop was a return to Barnes & Noble so I could finish my book shopping. I ended up picking up a few things:

I admit the three giant hardcover coffee-table-sized slabs caught my eye, and I’ll have plenty of time to thumb through them over the years. I’m kind of a sucker for retrospectives and histories, especially if they’re accompanied by copious amounts of glossy illustrations.

I spent the rest of the day reading, as all men should.

Coming to a Close

We left for Jim and Linda’s house early Sunday morning. The four of us spent most of the time before lunch catching up. Then Jim and I headed outside to grill some truly gargantuan Costco steaks in the opportune 15-minute window when it wasn’t raining. Truly a shocking event given how constant the drizzle was before and after that point.

Jen and I headed back around three, me toting the other half of the steak I couldn’t finish and an assortment of snacks bestowed upon me by her parents. All in all, a great capstone to my birthday weekend. It was all more than I had any right to expect, and I appreciate all the work Jen put into making it happen. I am well and truly blessed.

It’s too bad I had to leave for a last-second business trip on Monday. At least we spent as much time together as possible before then!

Until Tomorrow