Bofa Deez Berfdays
...'Cause it's Mayans AND it's Joe's, yo!
As promised in last month's newsletter, we need to kick off February by going back in time a bit to the final hours of January—whereupon we celebrated my birthday a few days early!
Berfday #1
Saturday the 31st, we braved Global Warming Climate ChangeTM and ventured across the tundra to my parents' house for dinner...
My parents' front yard has turned into a glacier...
What does Hannah think about this?
Anyway, since we didn't drown in the rising tide or get crushed under an avalanche, it was time to start the party!
Liv and Hannah were happy to play with their coolest cousin; and Hannah found out the hard way what happens when you steal Pop's seat...
We ordered dinner from Roman Delight—and I could've sworn I ate some pizza; but, as you can see, we all just split a plate of fries...
Then it was time for presents!
Liv was very excited to give me my birthday card...
...because...
...she had signed her name and Hannah's all by herself!
The girls also hand-made their gifts to me—whereas most three- and five-year-olds probably would've just given me some dumb impersonal gift card or a check ;)
The first canvas looked like an evidence photo from a crime scene of one of the victims of a serial killer I just made up called 'The Tracer'—except it's actually tres, as in the Spanish word for the number three...
The second one was the result of a precognitive vision of something that hadn't even come to pass yet but would happen very soon—just like the scenes Isaac Mendez from Heroes used to paint while he was high on heroin...
Still, it's a very impressive piece of art. I may even sell it on eBay if money gets tight.
And finally, there was a painting of Liv and me celebrating the fact that Hann—I mean, um, The Tracer—hadn't killed us yet...
Then it was Athennia's and Riley's turn...
First up was a license to fart, which was very thoughtful and well received!
And then...
...an appropriate T-shirt!
They also gave me two Reacher novels—since I enjoyed the first one I read last year—as well as the complete series of Letterkenny, since I still haven't seen the second half...
Then, as Liv's painting had foretold, we ate cake...
And, I later hung my new artwork on the wall above my desk...
...albeit changing the story a bit so that Liv and I have actually jointly been The Tracer the whole time, and we celebrate with a cake every time we kill someone and leave our infamous trio of bloody handprints behind as a signature at each crime scene.
Berfday #2
But first, after we left my parents' house Saturday night, we stopped by Joe and Paula's to exchange gifts with Joe since his birthday is three days before mine.
Liv's clairvoyance had failed to show her that Joe and Paula would offer us doughnuts when we got there!
Anyway, we'd brought Joe a whole bag of goodies ostensibly from Victoria's Secret...
First up was a wall tapestry of the Great Wall of China that 21 Chinese Kitchen had included in our order when we dined there on Christmas night...
...as well as a book of pennies from my change jar (to mock a bone-headed mutual acquaintance of ours who seriously believes that the discontinued penny is going to enjoy a perceived rarity and command an accordant price point at some point in our lifetimes).
Then we gave Joe a candle...
...so he can sniff bofa deez nuts anytime he wants.
...As well as a make birthdays great again card—and also the first six seasons of Letterkenny (which may or may not have come straight off of my media rack, given that I recently upgraded to the complete series)...
Better to re-gift my old DVDs to a new loving home than donate them to a thrift store that will just sell them at a profit to some arbitrageur who will turn around and list them on Facebook Marketplace to do the very same ;)
That just leaves more cash in our pocket to buy Joe something else in addition... like a killer woodworking T-shirt to match mine!
In return, Joe and Paula gave me a lovely birthday card and a very generous gift card to Boscov's.
Meanwhile, Riley took the opportunity to play with Stevie and lounge around under a blanket like a former elementary-school librarian who's enjoying her retirement as an old cat lady...
Back to the Future
So, that's what happened in the final hours of January.
Now onward to February!
On Sunday the 1st, I recorded this video of some schmuck stuck in the snow at the bottom of the street behind our apartment...
Then Monday was my 41st birthday; but we didn't really do anything special since we'd covered that over the weekend ;)
On Tuesday the 3rd, Riley used her artistic abilities to call Athennia out on not having updated the family calendar a full three days into the new month...
Hiring a Pro!
I still had this Boscov's gift card burning a hole in my pocket; so on Wednesday the 4th, I enlisted the help of a professional.
I call her "Mom"... and she's a lifelong Boscov's shopper with literal decades of experience!
We were about 20 minutes late in getting to the store as they opened, which meant that five other cars were already there.
But it was still nice being there on a Wednesday morning instead of something like a Saturday afternoon :)
I made her walk the entire store with me so I could see what all was on offer before I committed to anything.
In the end, I made out like a bandit—scoring a new shirt, a new wallet, and a duffel bag for myself; as well as two candles, a honeycomb soap dispenser, a stuffed Yoshi, and two cards to give Athennia and Riley for Valentine's Day.
Also, we made a pit stop at Home Depot and picked up a six-port charger for my Ryobi batteries, using the money my parents had given me for my birthday...
And for dinner that evening, Athennia surprised me by bringing home Qdoba (and McDonald's sponge nuggets for Riley)!
Dashbored
Thursday the 5th, I reached out to Joe since we hadn't been in touch since we'd exchanged gifts the previous weekend.
He said Paula was making pepper and egg sandwiches; so we headed over there and ate like kings.
Then we hung out for a bit and I decided to accompany him on a DoorDash run.
What an adventure that was!
One of our stops was at CVS for a can of Pringles... which we had to deliver to the AutoZone literally right next door.
Then we stopped at the Panera in Feasterville, where they seem to have designed the parking lot to discourage pedestrian traffic of any kind.
You have to park behind a curb, then cross a little throughway that people are flying down to bypass all the fuckery out on Street Road; and in exchange for all that effort, you finally make it to the opposite shore only to be greeted by this...
...Because a seasoned pole-vaulter probably still stands a small chance of a successful ingress.
After Panera, we hit up the Wal-Mart near my parents' house so that some lazy schlub in Hatboro could have two frozen pizzas and a 24-pack of Pepsi that were crucial enough to pay a premium for, but not quite precious enough for him to just put on pants and drive to the store himself.
We did a couple more deliveries and eventually ended up north of Richboro before we finally called it quits—at which point I announced that I was craving some Chick-fil-A... and three more shirts in blue, green, and red to match the gray one I'd bought at Boscov's the previous day and was enjoying tremendously.
I suppose we could've just paid someone else to go grab all of that stuff and deliver it to us; but, since we were already in the car, we just drove to the Neshaminy Mall and did our own shopping... like two old fogeys from the 20th century, when people used to do shit for themselves :)
MMA (without the Fighting)
And finally, there was an all-day MMA match outside the bedroom window all day today.
Usually "MMA" stands for "mixed martial arts"; but today it stood for "Morrisville Municipal Authority"—and, from what I could tell, they were fighting the street itself...
I'm not sure jackhammers are allowed in traditional MMA; but these guys were packing a jackhammer and an excavator, and they showed up at 8:30 A.M. to do what jack-asses (and excav-asses) do best:
As per federal regulations, they did maintain a strict ratio of eight guys standing around doing nothing for every one guy who was doing actual work.
Fun was had by all, except for some.
Namely, me.