The Old Man and the Concert

This weekend I turn 30. That’s years, people. It feels...pretty much the same as 29 did. Plus it’ll be convenient shorthand for me to remember about how old our first kid is. My age minus 30, about. No specific festivities, but we do tend to spread celebration around, so I get a birthday in stages over the course of about a week, which is nice for me.

Thursday was sort of my ‘Birthday at Work (observed)’ day because Jess made me cupcakes the day before. Cupcakes are the way to go when there’s just two of you for the cake-based celebration. There’s no way for two people to eat an *entire* cake, and so you either have to stuff yourself with cake for days (tempting, but I’m trying to keep slim) or bring leftover cake to work, which is always nice, but cupcakes are pre-measured for your convenience, and very easy to distribute since we got our cupcake carrier. So I gave away cupcakes at work and got a lot of ‘happy birthdays’ for our trouble. I also ate several of them myself. Cupcakes are delicious.

Jess then organized a ‘Nerf fight’ for me. I’ve been buying and distributing Nerf guns around the office for a few years now, and there’s now enough of them that we can get a pretty good firefight going if we all show up at the same time. Jess ambushed me in my office and I retaliated with my ridiculous Nerf Machine Gun. Fun was had by all. Then my officemate got me a couple more nerf guns the next day. They’re clear! I’m hoping to get to home depot this weekend to buy some LEDs so I can make a *glowing Nerf gun*. I think home depot sells random electronic components. Where else would I go. Radio shack? Have you seen that place recently?

Friday, also ‘for my birthday’ but realistically just because the timing worked out, I got to see Rodrigo y Gabriella in concert. A blast! The wait was pretty rough, unfortunately. We got there at 7 and there was an opening act at 8:30, the concert proper didn’t start until 9:30, which is a lot of time to stand on your feet. My long-suffering wife decided to just go hang out in the back where she could sit, but I stayed up pretty close to the action for the whole concert. They were a blast to listen to. I’m not sure how they mic the guitars but every time they gave their instruments a smack it resounded through the subwoofers for a serious kick. They did a bunch of songs I’ve heard from their albums, though they tended to have neat variations in the performance. High energy and lots of fun, though I think I’ve burned Jessie out on concerts for a while. Between the close quarters, tired legs, big crowds, and smoke, tobacco and...otherwise, she was pretty worn out at the end of the night.

We got home before midnight and got to wake up early, though, to head out to the Velloway again, a paved loop in southern Austin that’s only open to bikers and skaters. Jess hung out and exercised with her derby girls while I rode around on my bike. 13 miles for me, 7 for Jess. Not bad for the start of the weekend. We stopped at a place called Moonies that we’d been meaning to try out. They’re up by us and they do a *great* hamburger and really good chicken burger, too. They may have displaced Hutts as my second favorite hamburger spot in Austin. They’re certainly closer to the house. I could walk if I want to.

Later, for my birthday again, heh, I’m going to head out to McCormick and Shmicks. I get fish on my birthday. Then we’re going to stop at Whole Foods and check out some of those pastries that always look so pretty in the display cases.

-N