Birthday Party #2

Went great!  Dad was completely surprised (although since hindsight is 20-20, he mentioned several incidents that should have clued him in).  There were about 20 people there, mixing two spheres of his life: family and friends.  The food was great – we had the party at Tony Caputo’s restaurant downtown.  My slideshow was a great hit, conversation was stimulating and the humor was flowing.  Thanks to step-mom and older brother for setting the whole thing up – nice party!

And thank God that this busy week sandwiching taxes between my birthday and my dad’s is over.

Long time, no blog.

Yup, it’s been a busy week for me.  My birthday, taxes and today is my father’s 75th birthday.  But it’s been a good week, and (now I can’t post this right away, ‘cause my dad might read it before his surprise party) the party tonight is bound to be a blast.

My older brother threw me a party on my birthday, not a surprise party, but the theme was a surprise.  I fully expected the traditional black, over-the-hill, death theme, which was already done for the first two of this generation of our family to hit 50.  So instead he went the opposite way – like he was throwing a birthday party for one of his grandkids.  Complete with Cars theme, gift bags with things like a pirate eye patch and a fake sheriff's badge for everyone and a cake with a dinosaur (with wings and a halo).  Oh, and don’t forget the popper streamers.  It was awesome.  He also made a really nice little book with old pictures and sayings that was quite touching, although because of a little irony, it made me laugh instead. 

My good friend J and I always joke about how one of my favorite things to do on breaks from school is to sit around the house and watch DVDs in my BVDs.  So for my birthday she sends me this card:Well, in the book he made for me is this picture of him and me, one that I don’t remember ever seeing before: (See, J, it’s not a habit I picked up in my old age).

So it was a great night, a wonderful birthday.  Thanks to all, including all the rest of you who wished me a happy birthday. 

I got this card from my dad, which you’ll have to read this story to completely understand.  Although, it’s funny anyway. And this one from my sister and her family, that completely sums up my attitude towards aging:

So, it’s been a good, although busy, week.

 

 

P.S. – Sorry Pedro, I didn’t have the guts to put your card on here.

Dad

Me

It just ain’t right.

Things that shouldn’t ought to happen:

1. Any Utah Legislator getting re-elected.
2. Arby’s running out of roast beef
3. Chevron running out of gas.

And yet #1 happens all the time, #2 happened to me once back when I was living in West Valley and #3 happened tonight.

Technically we didn’t actually run out of gas, but one tank got so low that the pumps were giving up after only pumping 30 cents or so.   Of course, at the time all I knew was that the regular tank was reading only 234 gallons, which isn’t enough for the pumps to work.  And you have no idea how irritated people get when you tell them your gas station just ran out of gas.  (Actually, the majority were really good about it, even found some humor in it.)  The GM came down and messed around with things and finally got them running again, and I learned a few things in the process.

Like; did you know that there is no such thing as mid grade gasoline?  There’s just regular and premium. Mid grade is made by mixing regular and premium straight from the tanks at the gas station.

So, we have 3 tanks.  2 are regular and 1 is premium.  The regular tanks are supposed to switch back and forth, whenever one gets a couple hundred gallons lower than the other, it switches over to the fuller tank.  Our problem was that they weren’t switching.  We had 234 gallons in one, and 7356 gallons in the other, but it kept pumping from the lower one, and not doing a very good job of it.  So, just like anyone who has ever worked on a PC knows, sometimes the only thing to do is turn the whole thing off, let sit for a minute, and then start it all up again.  Seems to have worked, because when I left things were still working fine.

Go figure.