Birthday Brews & Brats

This evening was the super secret Orland Rotary's Burgers, Brats, and Brew Fest. It's an event that they hold every year, but nobody ever hears about it until after it's over. I think their only advertising is a banner over the main street of Orland. Seriously. But this year we managed to score some tickets, for the Canadian's birthday, from a Title Co. in town and invited a work friend to meet us there.

So, you know it's a classy event when your beer tasting glass is a Mason jar. At least I got a real wine glass (which I smuggled home in my purse). We got there about 15 minutes after they opened and there were literally only about 10 people there so we had all the drinks and food to ourselves! And boy was there some good stuff!

I made friends with the gentleman pouring white wines, who knew I liked sweet whites, so kept coming over to our table and refilling me with other wines he'd thought I'd enjoy like an "authentic white" which was a blend of Riesling and Moscato, an Asti Moscato, and a sweet Chardonnay. There were some seriously delicious beef sliders from Farwood Bar & Grill, a fancy restaurant in Orland, that were topped with French fried onions. OMG so good. And outside they had brats, cut into coins with mustard dipping sauces, carnitas tacos, and some other little burger I didn't try. And there was cheese. Lots and lots of cheese. Apparently there's a few creameries in the area and they make some pretty fantastic cheese. The biggest surprise, enjoyed by all three at our table? Stella Artois Cidre. A cider by an Eastern European (Prague) beer manufacturer. It was so good. Tart and crisp like a cider should be, but not quite as sweet as most of the American ciders. We all got numerous samples of it. If nothing else, it was worth going to just to learn about a new drink for our arsenal!

Tattoos, tattoos, and more tattoos!

After a two week ink allergy test I was ready for my tattoo eyeliner and I had my appt scheduled for Friday at 4:45 pm. After the Canadian dropped me off, I met Colleen at her in-home studio where she had me lay down so that she could apply a topical anesthetic that needed to sit for 30 minutes. After my eyelids were sufficiently numb, she got out the power tools and got to work. Thankfully, my eyelids were closed for the entire process and the numbing cream worked perfectly. I was absolutely thrilled with the finished result, though she did warn me it was darker than the final product would be after it healed.

The "before" has my own applied eyeliner, the "after" is all tattoo. Now I've got to keep Vaseline on my eyelids for the next week while it heals. Colleen said that my eyes would be swollen and sore in the morning, but they actually feel better today, no pain whatsoever.

The hardest part is keeping my fingers away from my eyes. The first thing I did this morning when I woke up was lay my pointer fingers on my eyes as if I was going to rub them, and then as soon as I felt the Vaseline I realized my mistake. But other than that, I've been good. I have to use Q-Tips to apply the Vaseline so that the tattoo isn't rubbed off. Thankfully I can still wear my glasses so you don't notice my super greasy eyes. I'm looking forward to shaving that whole minute off my morning makeup routine!

Birthday extravaganza

I had a wonderful birthday this year, joyously celebrated at work with balloons, gifts, and lunch.

For dinner we went to Leon Bistro downtown for a fancy pants evening.

Incredible calamari steak and mashed yams - everything was perfection.

Then, to top off my evening, even Google wanted to say 'happy birthday';

At the end of the day I ended up with some beautiful jewelry, candles, lotions, and perfume. All the things I love!

Gifts for Gavin

This afternoon was my friend Susan's baby shower for her third little boy, Gavin. It was up in P-town at the church we both grew up in so I got to see some old, familiar faces. Each of the guest tables were decorated in children's literature themes.

After a few games and some finger food snacks, we got down to gift opening business.

She got lots of good essentials to ship with her back to PNG (like diapers and wipes) when they leave next month. They're only going back for 6 months, so anything that can wait for them to come back, like the chair swing she got, will stay here. Since they've been back to deliver the baby, Susan's found out that her dad has terminal brain cancer, so they're only going back to PNG to finish some of their obligations and get their household packed to send everything back to the states which they figure will be about 6 months.

Then I'll see a little bit more of this crazy face on a regular basis!

Going out and having fun

Last night we had a dinner and movie date with my co-worker Josh and his wife Lenette at Japanese Blossoms followed by a showing of Rush (F1 movie).

Delicious dinner and a surprisingly wonderful ginger beer mojito. We finished just in time to high-tail it to our 7:35 movie showing of Rush which turned out to be a really good movie.

Snacking on some pre-movie licorice.

Today we had plans to be in P-town for Blues & Brews, a fundraiser for student music programs, because we had volunteered to pour beer from 12:30-5:00 pm.

There were two trailers of taps, ours had an IPA, blonde ale, amber ale, Belgian with apple cider, and a wheat beer. I was the money girl and Chris was my bartender. We had some initial problems with over carbonation, but it all got sorted out. Compared to the other workers and the majority of the customers, we were frickin' beer experts! When you actually know a thing or two about beer, you realize how little everyone knows. For our contribution we both got free event shirts. After our shift we met up with some work friends at the park and enjoyed some live music.

We stayed until about 6:30 pm before we started getting too cold and tired. On our way home we stopped at Target so I could get a few more gift items for a baby shower I'm going to tomorrow and then stopped at the newly remodeled Wendy's for a little evening snack.

Spicy chicken nuggets and iced coffee - yum!

Tomorrow I'm heading back up the hill for baby Gavin's shower (Susan's newest little boy) at First Baptist Church. I'd asked her what she really needed and she said pacifiers and bottles since you can't buy bottles in Papua New Guinea without a doctor's prescription because the mom's will use them for things they shouldn't. So black market bottles it is!

Mystery package

I got a package in the mail today which I suspect is for my birthday, but I don't know it's from.

The boy pulled out the packing slip so I wouldn't peek, but it didn't say who the mystery sender is. It's from S&D Fulfillment Center, so anyone who wants to lay claim....