Catalina Birthday Weekend

So today is officially the last day of my birthday week. I have always put way too much importance on birthdays, and affliction I blame 100% entirely on my mom and her need to make a big ta-do about my birthday every year growing up. I am her only child and my mom loves parties, so this makes sense, but this big fanfare regarding my birthday has damaged me greatly. I’ve had to go through life being sorely disappointed that not many people take birthdays all that seriously and they most definitely don’t take mine with the high importance I put upon it. What do you mean June 28th isn’t a national holiday?

Anyhow, this gets us to the birthday week. Because I put such stress on celebrating my birthday properly, it’s always a bit of a bummer when my birthday doesn’t fall on a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. If my birthday falls on a Monday or Thursday, I suppose I could encompass it into a birthday weekend but screw that! Might as well go whole hog and get the whole week! If you are wondering what birthday week entails, it’s really not all that exciting. Basically if I feel like being unreasonable or more demanding than usual, I can announce, “Birthday Week!” and the person I’m being unreasonable or demanding to isn’t allowed to complain any more than an eye roll. I suppose it’s not much, but I so love being unreasonable and demanding that not getting any flack for it is pretty damn cool.

For the weekend part of Birthday Week, Andy got me a mini-break out to Catalina Island. It was a last minute decision because while he had planned to take me to Denver for the weekend (I still crave Spicy Pickle Gobbler panini and hanging out at Red Rocks) the plane flights out never went down in price. Catalina isn’t cheap, but it doesn’t cost $500 to just get there. Also, because it was a local trip, Maggie and Dave were able to come out and join us for a couple of the days.

Andy and I left on Saturday morning from the Balboa Pier. It was a nice ride out to the island, though the waves were a bit choppy and half of the boat was either throwing up or just generally looking green. Neither Andy nor I suffer from motion sickness, so we just sipped our spicy bloody marys and watched the view – the ocean view, not the people getting sick view, because that’s kind of gross. After getting on the island, we checked into our hotel on the world’s steepest hill, the Zane Gray Pueblo, and walked back down to the Locker Room…to watch the World Cup…which we did a surprising amount of. World Cup watching that is.

Andy and Dave both made jokes about the Germans leaving their towels out.

The entire weekend was really nice. There’s not too much to tell really. A lot of eating. A lot of drinking. There was the Christmas Tree dancing at Catalina’s only dance club where some girl slapped Maggie’s ass while she was dancing (yes, I was a bit put off that my ass never got slapped – it was my birthday weekend after all). We rented a golf cart and cruised around. We got our Wicky Wacked. There was a really nice Sunday evening where Andy and I just went back to the hotel lobby – a big living room really – and watched ‘Cheers’ re-runs and Andy had to convince me not to play ‘Joy to the World’ on the hotel piano. It was all a really nice time. Sorry that the photos are all repeats from the posted Facebook ones – I never got around to uploading the pictures from the camera.

Andy points to the spot on his nose that is bruised from me playing "Gotcher-Nose" earlier.  No seriously, I broke a capillary in his nose.   Instead of apologizing, I just called him Rudolph.

He's still angry about the 'Rudolph' thing.

I will have to mention my favorite moment in the entire trip. We were back at the Locker Room on Monday afternoon watching the Brazil vs. Portugal match. A commercial came on for the new Neutrogena SPF 100+ sunscreen. Andy turns to me and exclaims, “Who the hell is SPF 100 sunscreen for? Albinos? ….or gingers, I suppose.” I went out for a cigarette to kind of hide my shame before I came back and whispered in Andy’s ear, “You do know that there is an albino sitting three stools away from you, right?” And there was! I had seen him come in about an hour earlier. Walking out later Andy said, “…I mean really. You make an albino comment once every 5 years, what are the chances that there’s one sitting Right There.”

Downtown Avalon

I was planning on telling you about our hotel – which really was like glorified camping – or the 10 AM hotel shuttle that came at 10:15 only after we called him 3 times to come and get us (damn island time) - or the horrible, if not greatly amusing, karaoke we saw – but it’s the last day of my birthday week and I just don’t feel like it. I will not, however, turn down any cake you feel like sending my way.

 Oh yes, I definitely got my wicki-wacked.