In which I relate the events of my birthday weekend

I just realized that I haven’t talked about my birthday.

I came into the birthday weekend overtired and frustrated because I couldn’t find any of the gifts I wanted for my brother. (Wausau is surprisingly lacking in Canon printers and Dremel 10.8V battery packs.)

I got to my mom’s house early Saturday evening. My brother, mother, and I went out to Half Nelson’s in New London. We chose it because we wanted to try a new place. Matt was nervous about a potential lack of vegetarian choices but it had a really good menu for a backwater sports bar. Once we were home, Matt and I stayed up insanely late.

Sunday was the Super Bowl. We watched the ads mostly. The came the gift-giving. My mom got me a Rubik’s Cube (and some cash). Matt got me some interesting gifts. The first one was a light bulb lamp.

The second one was a tie. It was a sedate blue tie with a pattern of lighter blue dots on it. I looked at the tie, looked at my brother, and looked at the tie again. My brother knows me well enough to know just how useful a tie is to me so I figured there had to be something else going on. On a hunch I flipped it over and looked inside. Sure enough, there was a very naked lady silkscreened inside the tie. Apparently Matt bought it from a street vendor in Italy. Figures that he would find something like that in Italy…

The third gift from my brother was a saxophone. A real tenor saxophone… Apparently this is the horn that he worked on when he went to instrument repair school. He made me promise not to show it to anyone as an example of his repair abilities. Apparently he made some mistakes while he was learning but it plays fine (as long as he can tweak it every year or so). Now I just need a place to practice…

Once the gifts were opened, we packed up and headed out. I am happy to say that I made it though my birthday this year without a car accident, which was nice. And then I slept.