ryan’s birthday weekend

This weekend, we spent an enjoyable lot of time celebrating Ryan’s birthday. I started gathering people last week to celebrate with us on Friday night at dinner… we had a pretty good crowd: Ryan and I, Mike and Anna, Meagan, Jesse, Amanda and Lisa. The first six of us met up at our place and piled into Ryan’s car (Jesse in the very back) and headed to Olive Garden to meet Amanda and Lisa. Turns out there was an hour and 45 minute wait there, so we called Johnny Carino’s down the road, who told us their wait was more like 20-25 minutes.

We got there, and instead of having to wait in the rain like we would have at Olive Garden, we opted to wait in the bar. Meagan bought a carafe of Italian Sangria, which was strooooong… definitely stronger than Olive Garden’s foofy Sangria. This, you could tell, was made with wine… and plenty of it. Quite tasty. We were finally seated after what seemed an eternity, and enjoyed good food and even better conversation. Jesse insisted on getting the check for me and Ryan, which was a pleasant and gracious surprise. After dinner, everyone basically dispersed… we were pretty tired, actually, so it was kind of nice.

Saturday morning I woke up at 9am, ready to go… Ryan slept in a little later. I went to Chacho’s and picked up some breakfast tacos, and a little while later his mom got to our place so that we could go to Sea World. We had a great time at the park… we saw three shows, rode two roller coasters, and went to the Brewmaster’s Club… the beer tasting seminar-event thing that replaced Beer School. We did see Anna, the woman who taught Beer School last year, and told her that we were hoping to do that again… she said that she missed it, too. But this was enjoyable enough, and of course we really got into our free beer samples, and all found something new that we liked.

After Sea World, we went to Meme’s for dinner… a tasty brisket! 🙂 She said that she forgot to give me a birthday present, and gave me a Clinique Happy perfume set, which was really nice! And Ryan got presents too… 🙂 After we left, we were going to go to Central Market to see if they had Ryan’s pumpkin ale, but they were closed. Instead, we went to HEB and got a 12-pack of Dundee’s Honey Brown, which is soooooo good… appropriately fall-like, I think. Had a couple of beers and went to sleep.

Yesterday was fairly quiet, as Ryan had to work… but he’s getting frustrated with his job again, and so we’re keeping an eye out for the next thing. We might be here for a while, but who knows? We’re just trying to discern what’s right for us. We also took the dogs to the dog park again, which is becoming a weekly thing for us. Barker did GREAT off the leash this time, and even though there were a few minor scuffles at the park, Barker was always off at the perimeter of them, never in the middle. Hailey was the life of the party as usual, endearing herself to all the people at the park as the Happy Pit Bull Ambassador.

Settled in after we got home to watch a little TV, talk on the phone with some friends, and have some beer. Today it was hard to get up, especially since it looked like it was going to rain, and that’s the PERFECT time to stay home and sleep in. But here I am anyway, even though my boss is in a meeting for most of the day, I think… so I am not very busy. Ah well… it was a busy weekend anyway, so I’m glad to keep quiet today.