Why I Had The Best Birthday Weekend Ever

Hyperbole is the best thing ever!  So was my birthday!  Thanks so much to everyone who wished me a happy birthday and celebrated in person and in spirit.  Lots of fun.  Some free stuff, too.

Eddie planned my birthday celebration, which was the major part of my gift from him.  Then it was kind of a surprise and kind of not.  He gets excited about planning things, so not long after planning, he came into the living room one night and was like, Wanna know what we're doing for your birthday?  Then another night: wanna know who's coming so far?

From past discussion, he gleaned together an interesting night: dinner at the Ninja restaurant and then Escape the Room.  This?  Sounded like a great night.  And it was.  It totally was.

The Ninja Restaurant
You go inside and go into an elevator and then ninjas get all ninja-y on you.  You get poked with swords.  You get terrified to go to the bathroom.  You get magic.  You get told to break a board with your head.  I did not break a board with my head.  I did, however, get a free ninja headband.  We saw ninja turn throwing stars into chocolate mousse cake.  We saw things bubble and foam.  We saw things set on fire.  And the whole time, ninjas jumped into the room yelling at us and we jumped every single time, even when we saw it coming.

Escape The Room
These escape games are all the rage, but I think Escape The Room NYC is the original.  We did one before and lost.  I was pretty sure we had better chances with a bigger group.  We chose to do the theatre-themed room with eleven people.  I was completely lost the whole time.  There were codes and numbers and letters to figure out.  There were keys and locks and doors.  There were those of us who were catching on quickly and then there were those of us who were moving around the room seemingly with purpose but really having no clue as to what to do other than repeat the same number we figured out in the first five minutes in the hopes that it would be useful.  Perhaps I was in the latter group.  We did not escape the room, but the key master clue keeper person told us that we came so close.  When she revealed the actual solution, it did not seem as if we were that close at all.

Also, I almost got locked in the bathroom, which was a very long room with a full-length mirror behind the toilet, and I found it so odd that I took a picture of it.  Then I pulled and pulled on the lock until it finally moved over and let me out.  Success!  I escaped the bathroom!

Sidenote: Twice, I've gotten stuck in a stall in the Penn Station bathroom.  S and AK had to come get me.  The first time, I had no service on my cell at first so I dilly dallied until I did and they came and found me.  The second time, they were less impressed with my cell-phone stealth and were like, Where are you this time??  It hasn't happened again.

Free Stuff!!!!!
On my actual birthday, Eddie woke me up super early because he was excited to give me gifts.  These were gifts I didn't think I was getting because I told him that planning my birthday was gift enough.  But he likes to give gifts.  Early in the morning.  They were so great!  We have a plan to go to a museum next week.  The guy listens!

Then, after stopping by my parents' house for birthday wishes, we headed to the mall.  I hate shopping, BUT I had lots of free coupons.  I got something free from Sephora.  Then I got a free drink from Cinnabon.  Then we went to Macy's and used a gift certificate and some discounts for Eddie because he needed stuff and he didn't want to go on my birthday but I was like, I don't want to come back to the mall so part of my gift is that we can get shit done today, and he was like, I love your birthday.

The mall is actually really pretty.

We stopped at the food court for lunch. I had a free salad and free water (I'd had an issue with a salad place there cross-contaminating the ingredients in the food, so they'd sent me a coupon for a free salad).  We used gift cards on Eddie's meal, so that was also free.  In between, I'd stopped off for samples at Teavana and David's Tea.  Teavana now has someone standing near the sample station, which is a huge bummer because then I've gotta listen to the spiel about buying something.  Ha.  Buying.  What is this thing called buying?

You know, a healthy lunch.

Model. Clearly.

Rebel. Clearly.

I was down for the count for a few hours because I never really drink caffeinated sugary drinks, and the large mocha thingie I'd gotten from Cinnabon sent me for a loop and a half.

I rallied by dinnertime, though.  We took my parents to IHOP where I got a free meal.  AND they got a senior discount.  How much do I love my birthday?

A Few Days Later
DSW had sent me a $5 coupon for my birthday, and then sent me a $20 coupon because I hadn't shopped there in a while.  Little did they know, I'd planned to buy new boots and sandals anyway.  So, I bought one pair of sandals and one pair of riding boots for the grand total of $21 after coupons and gift cards.  Then I got an email offer the next day to receive a free bag with purchase, so of course I emailed them to see if I could snag the offer since I'd just made a purchase.  Fingers crossed.

I also had a yearning for pretzels the other night, so off to the mall we went in search of a PretzelMaker.  Eddie spotted it first, so we went over.  I showed them the coupon and was like, I'd like to use this.  The woman, who'd been leaning her butt against one of the counters--not near the food but still, a little gross--looked at the certificate, looked at me, looked at the certificate, and then looked at me again and said, No, I don't think so.  Eddie was about to say something, but I was like, Yes, it has your address right on it.  She looked at it again and then reluctantly asked me what kind of pretzel bites I wanted. Plain, please!   Then she asked what kind of drink I wanted.  Coke, please!  We paid for the Coke with a gift card, so free! (the deal is that you buy a drink and get pretzels for free, so it's not really free, but it kind of is).  The entire transaction took about ten minutes when it could have taken maybe three.  Eddie said something really witty about running in reverse gear and it's totally not witty how I'm retelling it right now.  Dammit.  Anyway, the pretzels were good.  Because they were free.

Over the weekend, I also stopped by a Baskin Robbins and got a free small frozen yogurt.  Usually Eddie gets a soft serve ice cream--my birthday treat to him--but he didn't want it.  He'd eaten an Applebee's lava cake earlier in the day, and I'd skipped any kind of dessert, so this one was for me.

I have a Starbucks drink and a $3 coupon to CVS left along with a slice at Sbarro's and a salad from Au Bon Pain.  The first two I'll use soon, but the second two will probably expire before I get to use them.  But that's okay.  There's always next year.

Birthdays are the best days.

Celebrating with family and friends was the best part, but here's the second best part: the stuff.

Fourteen

Imagine there is no heaven

It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky

Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You, you may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you will join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You, you may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you will join us
And the world will live as one

Lobster, Windmill, Pollock, and One Not So Big Duck

The final Sibling Daytripping Summer event: Windmill in Watermill, lobster rolls at The Lobster Roll, awesomeness at the Pollock Krasner house, and the Big Duck in Flanders.

I was up for the long drive because Southampton was my MFA home.  I drove out there once a week and spent 10 days each summer there as I earned my degree.  I love the vineyards.  I've been through corn mazes out there.  Visited the lighthouse a few times.  It's my territory for fun stuff.

On a Thursday midmorning, it took like three hours.  What the?  I understand summer traffic going out east, but this was ridiculous.  My brother was getting a kick out of my astonishment of the traffic.  We saw some cool roadside art and I noticed an art museum I'd never seen before, so that distracted me from the drive.

We finally got to our first stop in Watermill.  We were wondering how we'd find the windmill when suddenly, it appeared. 

Oh, there it is. (Anthony Rau photography)

(Anthony Rau photography)

Then back in the car!  We'd parked behind a car from Maryland on the side of the road, hoping that we wouldn't get a ticket.  Also hoping that they didn't come all the way from Maryland to see only this windmill.  It was pretty and nice, but it took maybe ten minutes to walk around it and take it in.

Back in traffic, we finally found The Lobster Roll in the middle of nowhere in Amagansett.  The parking is tight but we luckily pulled in right as someone was pulling out.  It was busy but we didn't have to wait long to get a table.  I'd been thinking I'd have to split something with my brother because the serving sizes looked huge, but on the menu they offered sliders.  Lobster Roll Sliders!!  He got a shrimp roll and I got a lobster roll slider and we basically devoured our food, saying over and over again, This is so goooooood!  We'd driven three hours to eat for maybe twenty minutes.  It was worth it.

Famous people who've eaten lobster rolls

Lookit how tiny it is!

Because you gotta make it black and white (Anthony Rau photography)

Then we found the Pollock Krasner house.  It's a museum as per the wishes of Lee Krasner upon her death.  The tour is $5 unless you have a SUNY ID.  Which means for me it was FREE!  We took the spiral bound book self-tour and followed its instructions to take in the view of the water first, the studio second, and the house third.  While we were in the studio, we had to put on these ridiculous slippers, and my brother somehow found the wrong size and was busting out of his.  While we went around reading the explanations on the walls, some guy was talking to the docent really loudly, namedropping artists and actors and telling the story of how he worked on the set of the movie Pollock.  That was a really good movie, but reading was difficult with the guy's yammering on.  Everywhere else was quiet, and the guy finally stopped talking and we were able to take in the rest of the studio in peace.  It looks very much the same as it does in the photos from the past.  Very eerie and quite exciting.

There's a photo of Pollock and his mistress sitting on these rocks the day they died.

I kinda wanted to keep these.

Name Those Artists!

Dried paint and a turkey baster

I'm an ass.

The rest of the book had the entire history of Pollock and then of Krasner and of the grounds.  I read a lot of it out loud, but then it got to be tiresome, especially after we'd seen everything.  At the back of the book was a map of how to get to the cemetery where Pollock is buried, but we didn't do that.  The house and studio were the best way to remember him.


We headed Westward, homeward, and The Big Duck was kind of on the way because really anything West of where we were was homeward and on the way, so we decided to stop to see it.  It took like an hour to go five miles.  I took my traffic frustrations out on the duck.  When it finally appeared roadside, I was like, It's not that big!

Lame duck

I was expecting a gigantic duck, and really, it's more of a medium duck.  We went inside, and I was delighted that we could actually go inside, and the woman there explained to us the history of the duck.  There used to be a duck farm there.  Also, any building shaped like what it sells is called a duck.  So this building shaped like a duck sells duck stuff, so it's a duck.  A boot-shaped building that sells boots is called a duck.  An apple-shaped building that sells apples is called a duck.  And so on.  This duck is also a national landmark.  Because we learned fun facts such as these, I was no longer disappointed in the duck. 

Duck with a door

Not much smaller than the duck but okay, it's still a big duck

Duck's ass HAHAHAHHAHHAHAAAA!

Sepia duck (Anthony Rau photography)

Back into the traffic once more, and this time, it was rush hour.  However, when you're so far out, rush hour isn't really the issue.  Once we hit more civilization, we flew towards home because we were pretty much behind rush hour because no one who lives that far out should be commuting this far in.  Thinking it over, however, sitting in traffic for a few hours at a time to see everything we saw ain't all that bad.  One trip Eastward and we got to take in art, seafood, wind mills, and ducks all in one day.  Day tripping at its best.

Coney Island Koi

Seriously, who wins a koi fish and two gold fish from Coney Island and takes it home and buys a tank and a catfish to keep as pets?  Seriously?

But before that happened, Eddie sank one of those near-impossible baskets and won a stuffed monkey for me.  Then we rode the scary haunted ride and I spent the whole time screaming and hiding behind the monkey.  When we came out of the ride, I was clutching the monkey, and people were laughing, and AF was laughing and pointing at the booth where our pictures were on screen.  She was like, You have to see yours! In our picture, Eddie had his eyes closed and was laughing and you couldn't see me.  All you could see was the monkey in front of my face. 

I mean, I don't mind scary, but when the ride is pitch black--so dark that I couldn't see my own hand--I'm not into that.  Eddie kept saying, You have to look!  And I was like, Nope, I absolutely do not.

We watched fireworks with AF and SMM.  They were fun.

Then Eddie got this brilliant idea to win a fish.  We walked over to the fish game and the guy gave us four buckets of balls to throw into these tiny fish bowls.  I was throwing them trying to miss on purpose and I got two in.  In total, we all got in a whole lot, enough to win a koi.  When we went to collect the fish, the woman gave us two goldfish too, and she would have given us more had we not stopped her.

On the way home, water kept sloshing out of the tank at odd times.  However, the fish made it home.

The next day, we went to the pet store and bought a tank with a filter, and Eddie put the whole thing together because I wanted nothing to do with taking care of other living things.  He also bought a catfish because they help keep the tank clean. The catfish is crazy and was biting the koi's tail. Actually, all the fish are crazy. They go nuts whenever you walk into the room.

The one thing that matters most however is that the fish are still alive.  Good job, Eddie.

Stupid fish

Fox Free Preview With Even More Free

Do I look suspicious?

I won free passes from Fresh 102.7 to go to the FOX Fall Preview at AMC in NYC.  I'd already had plans with my officemate to go to dinner, so we had salads in Bryant Park first.  I'd arrived at the park a bit early, so I sat by the carousel because I liked the music. I felt like I was kind of in Paris, and I'm in the middle of reading The Paris Wife, which is amazing, so it was as if I was in the book.

I was keeping to myself, reading my book, sipping my free Dunkin Donuts iced coffee (this DD gift card I have is lasting forever!), and listening to the carousel music.  Usually I'm one to avoid where kids go to scream, but no children were screaming.  It was a perfect evening to wait in the park.

And then came along imperfection.  Some guy came over and pointed to the empty chair on the other side of my table, asking, Can I sit here? I do not feel like talking to people, I want to be anti social, and you seem to be quiet and reading, and I don't want to deal with anyone right now.

Then he did a shaking shuddery motion as if to shake off the thought of talking.  I glanced up and said a quick, Sure no problem, and went back to my book.

A quick search on Bing will offer the definition of anti-social through the Oxford English Dictionary as "not sociable" and "not wanting the company of others."  This is what I understood this dude to mean when he said he didn't want to talk to anyone.

Apparently, he either forgot he wanted to be anti-social or he doesn't know how to look up words in a dictionary because after a few moments of silence, he piped up, Are you in the FDNY? You look suspicious like you could be.

Now I've been accused of being lots of things--usually by irate students--but a police officer is not one of them.  So I responded, Me? No, I am not.  I sipped my coffee, barely looking up.

Mr. I Don't Know What Anti-Social Means then replied that he'd been in a park and met a woman who looked like a tourist who was actually an undercover cop.  He said he never would have thought it because her cover was so good.  Then he indicated my sunglasses and large book and repeated that I looked like I was undercover NYPD.

Apparently, Mr. I Don't Know What Anti-Social Means frequents parks and asks strangers if they are undercover.

For the record, I wear sunglasses because the sun is bright.  I wear big sunglasses because I can't get over the fashion trend of wearing sunglasses the size of my head.  The bigger the better, really.  And I read books because I like books.  I didn't explain this to him, though.  I simply responded, Nope, I'm just reading my book, waiting for my friend.

The conversation ended there with him nodding and agreeing to accept the fact that I was not undercover NYPD (though I could have been a Russian spy or something! Maybe he asked the wrong question! But I'm not a Russian spy.  I have been asked if I'm Russian before, however.  See how it all comes around?)
A few minutes later, he once again spoke up, but this time it was more of his being a detective, saying, Here's your friend now!  Maybe he was relieved that I actually was waiting for a friend and not simply blowing him off.  SD appeared from behind me smiling, and I greeted her saying, He thought I was in the NYPD.  She laughed and we walked away, not really knowing where we were going except for away from him.

After walking a loop to check out the food stands, one of which had a delightful selection of waffles, we settled on salads from Pax and eating al fresco.  And then it was time for the previews.

Only no one knew where we should check in.  Neither of the tables set up in the theater's lobby was for FOX.  I asked someone at the box office, and they told me to go up to Customer Service.  I asked Customer Service and they told me to go up to the theatre where the preview would be.  Then after waiting around a few minutes, someone told us to go outside because there was a line.

 When we went outside, we saw a line that was totally not there before.  We waited on this line for about 45 minutes and I didn't have a ticket like everyone else.  When we got to the front of the line where the guy told us to have our tickets out, I explained I had no ticket.  He said, Did you win passes?  I said yes, and he said to go into the lobby.

There in the lobby, where I'd first gone, was a table set up with FOX stuff, and the woman who had told us to go outside on the line was at the table, checking IDs.  So really, we were back where we started.

Really, it didn't matter because we got in before they had to turn people away (they always give away more tickets than seats to ensure that the theatre fills).  They also gave us each a free small popcorn and a free small soda.  SD was like, I'm glad we didn't have waffles for dinner, and I concurred because once we got into the theatre, they also gave us ice cream. So let's recap so far: FREE tickets, FREE popcorn, FREE soda, and FREE ice cream.

Then when we found our seats, we saw that we had swag waiting for us.  A tote bag for Scream Queens, a t-shirt for The Grinder that has Rob Lowe's head on it, and a hat for Grandfathered.  All that for FREE.

The staff encouraged us to take selfies and spread them on social media with the hashtags for the shows.  Then they told us about each show and I think we run in different circles from some of the girls who were there because the staff was announcing the names of some of the actors and girls were cheering and shouting and we were like, Who are they talking about??  BUT we knew Fred Savage and John Stamos and Rob Lowe.  We also knew Emma Roberts and Ariana Grande, so that bridged the gap.

We really liked Grandfathered, we kind of liked The Grinder, and we had no idea what to think about Scream Queens.  That show is supposed to be funny thriller killery, but mainly, it was over-the-top mean and offensive.  Like, the girl kills someone in a fryer in a kitchen, and that's not the mean, offensive part.  The mean-offensive part is how she talks to everyone around her and then there's a character who's deaf and sings Taylor Swift songs and the joke is that she's deaf and then SPOILER ALERT she gets killed.  The only part that was remotely funny was when Ariana Grande's character was fighting with someone who was trying to kill her, and instead of screaming at each other, they were texting each other. 

Every time a show I watch ends, I do my best to not replace it so that I have more time to read and write.  This whole FREE passes thing might make me check out some FOX shows this season, which is totally the point, but even so, free is free is free.

Fun With Blacklight, Monster Mini-Golf Style

Once the anniversary celebration came to a close, Eddie and I took AF and SMM to play mini golf.  Still reeling from his incomprehensible tie, Eddie was out to prove something.  I was out to have some fun in blacklight.  I got a Groupon to play Monster Mini-Golf, which is an actual thing.  It's an indoor mini-golf course that's in the dark under blacklight where scary things glow.  We got stuck behind a group of 8, most of whom were not very good at mini-golf.  We were all actually doing pretty well at first, which meant we would complete a hole really quickly and then we'd be smushed between the 8 girls in front of us and then the four people behind us, and the entire course was basically backed up.  Good thing they play fun music.  AND we got to entertain ourselves for a while by taking pictures in blacklight even though they don't come out really well.  Because I wear contacts and have light eyes, I looked pretty creepy. 

We are idiots.

In the end, I came in last and Eddie won and AF and SMM were somewhere in the middle.  Eddie can now sleep better at night, reigning mini golf champ.