Birthday Weekend 2010

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything and I have all manner of news both good and bad.
Friday began as usual with my getting up to go to work. I worked 3 hours before being taken down to HR to be fired. The manager collected my stuff from my desk and I took it and walked home.
In the hours after getting home I worked on several small projects before my wife got back from her brother’s. We ran a couple errands before attending my annual birthday ritual of midnight pie at Sherris.
For those of you not in the know, each year for the past 10 years I’ve been going to Sherris at midnight to have birthday pie. It started in 2000 when I was feeling rather down because my birthday hadn’t been readily remembered. For the next several years I would take a small group of friends to the all night restaurant for pie. The down side to this being that for several years in order to celebrate I would have to buy pie for everyone. It wasn’t until 2007 that I actually received a gift at Midnight Pie. It was one of the Hellboy animated features, and it was from my now wife Michele.
But I digress, my wife Michele has been wanting a wet tile saw for the last year. Most of the time when asked what I want for my birthday I will choose a store and ask for a gift card. When Michele has been asked what I want she has JOKINGLY said that I want a wet tile saw. What she didn’t know is that I went behind her back and told people that what I wanted was the expression on her face when she gets a wet tile saw for my birthday. I got what I asked for.
After getting up on the 3rd we went out with the intention of going to a few garage sales and to this Box Store clearance shop. Next door is StoneWest, one of the best granite/marble countertop installers that I know of. Sadly they’re going out of business. The “economic downturn” having finally done them in. What that meant is that they were liquidating their inventory so slabs and remnants of stone were cheap or free. Michele, with her love of stone carving and lapidary, was in heaven. She ended up grabbing about 150 pieces ranging from 4″x4″x.25″ to 18″x56″x1.25″. Everything from jade and honey onyx to blue lavedurite(sp?). For those of you who haven’t had the privilege of meeting my wife, she is the craftiest person I know, which is to say she sews, beads, knits, crochets, weaves, carves, bakes, cooks, paints, etc. What’s more is she does any and all of these things with a greater proficiency than almost anyone I know. Even then the handful of people I know who may do 1 or 2 better, are never better at the other things she does. The reason I mention this is that in addition to all this she also has a quirky sense of humor. A year or 2 ago we went to Portland’s Saturday Market and she got a shirt that says “I make art.” It’s one of her favorite shirts and she wears it often, and has modified it with a big blue patch of the letter F in front of art. She was wearing said shirt at Stonewest on the 3rd when one of our local celebrities came in. Jodie Bergsma is one of the biggest art people in our berg, she makes a living off her art, something that I can only one day aspire for. Michele met Jodie, the talked about their similar taste in rocks and all the while Michele’s shirt was screaming I make Fart. We returned home with our rocks, unloaded them, and Michele wanted to drive back with a pair of earrings she’d made out of Jodie’s favorite rock.
The fourth was relatively uneventful. We had barbecue, birthday cake, fireworks, and friends. Nothing extraordinary.
The 5th involved watching the Last Airbender and relaxing.
The 6th began with filing paperwork and looking for employment.