Birthday Weekend Recap

My birthday is December 4th. I celebrated a bit the weekend prior. As you can read below, the weekend was started off with the Guns N Roses concert, but some other things went down that day and the following couple of days.

The original plan was for my girlfriend to get off work at noon to make the trip to Des Moines and join me in getting to the concert early. I figured there would be quite a long line for the floor seats that night so leaving my house at 5pm, grabbing a quick bite to eat, and then hanging out at the Hilton Coliseum should have been a breeze to get us up front. There isn't any other reason to have floor tickets if you aren't going to be toward the front with a great view.

Thursday was a huge snow day in Missouri and my girlfriend wasn't sure she'd make it. I stayed positive and sent her a link with the road conditions. By noon that day, the roads were ok to travel and got better the further north she'd have traveled. Well, the day started with her getting stuck in her parking lot at home. Her boss got her to work and had some guys get her truck out. While the truck has turned out to be in the same running condition prior to getting stuck, she was told that there were problems with it and she shouldn't travel. That put her in a not so great mood as this concert may be a once in a lifetime thing depending on Axl's mood. It's not something you take chances with if it's important to you. Well, there was no way she could get out by noon and the later it got the more likely it was she'd be stranded in Missouri for the weekend. Well, that turned out to be the case. I called my roommate and he offered less than half of the ticket price if I couldn't sell it and mine for more. It was too late to sell so I took the rip off price and let him have the ticket that cheap. (I have other ways to get the rest out of him. He reads this blog on occasion, too!) You can read about the concert experience below.

At about 3AM, my roommate and I started heading south for a Missouri road trip. We stopped at Wally World for a case of water and some caffeinated drinks. I did all the driving and we only saw one deer along the way to Missouri. We arrived at our destination about 8AM to the smell of biscuits and gravy. We were welcomed by my girlfriend and her daughter and fed heartily before crashing for a few hours. My roommate got the couch and I got a fairly comfortable Queen Size bed. I say fairly comfortable because I have a King size pillow top mattress and I have to give my girlfriend a hard time for having the more comfortable sleeping area. I told her to not let me sleep past 1pm and just before time was up, she woke me up. It's always great waking up to someone you love.

We pretty much puttered around the house most of the day, but I had the pleasure of joining my girlfriend for some taxi excursions for her daughter. In doing so, I got a nice trip around the town I spent most of my youth growing up in. It was great to see the changes and the familiar. Memories came rushing back at every turn.

My roommate and I were fed a wonderful chicken dinner that evening and we all turned in early since we needed the sleep. Sunday morning we had the aroma of more sausage, bacon, and French toast made by her daughter. Breakfasts like this are awesome. We ate a lot and then spent the rest of the morning just visiting for a while. I told them that we had to make a trip in to Wal-Mart for some shopping before leaving town, though.

We finally got around and headed out for another tour around a couple other parts of town and I wanted to see if anyone was at my old church. Sure enough, there was a carry-in dinner occurring at the church so my roommate and I headed inside. While in there I ran into some friends from my youth. Adults who had helped teach me and people who were friends of the family were there to say hello to. It was also great admiring the addition onto the building. I will be back in June for a celebration of my parents' wedding anniversary.

We finally got around to heading to Wal-Mart. I had received some Christmas money from my parents and wanted to get some new work clothes. I had asked my girlfriend to pick out something she'd consider stylish that might look good on me. She has great taste and picked out two wonderful outfits. I've received compliments on them at work and sent a picture to my mom for her to see. Thank goodness people like this stuff! I've always gone the plain route, but this new set of clothes looks good. If someone doesn't like them, I can always just say my girlfriend dresses me funny.

My roommate and I took off for Des Moines and made it home before 7:30pm that night to get settled and rested after such a crammed in weekend. I figured that if my girlfriend couldn't come see me, I'd go see her and we had a great time. She was kind enough to get me a handheld Yahtzee game and a card that fit me to a T.

Yes, I'm another year older, but it was a good way to celebrate.