Birthday Bonanza

My birthday fell on a Sunday this year. For the past two years, Jill and I have traveled to NYC to watch the first and second parts of The Lord of the Rings trilogy at Radio City Music Hall, where the music is performed by live orchestra and choirs.

This year, the birthday "celebrating" started early. (I'll explain why "celebrating" is in quotes later). A wonderful friend of ours came over on Saturday evening once CJ had gone to sleep so that Jill and I could slip out for the evening. We decided to use another pair of our AMC passes, so we drove over to the mall to catch a late show. Jill had checked on a few before we left, and -- based on some web-crowd-sourcing -- so we decided to see Contagion.

It turned out to be an incredibly shocking and make-you-think thriller.

You know how most times you leave a great movie and there's a buzz in the theater as everyone is leaving. Not from this show. I guess the way to describe it was everyone was subdued and pensive, slowly shuffling out of the theater. I don't want to spoil the movie in case any of you might go see it; just know that you'll probably want to wash your hands every 5 minutes for the rest of your life and carry hand sanitizer at all times... Hence the "celebrate" -- it was great to get out and spend time with Jill, the movie was well-acted and intense, but it was kind of a downer.

On Sunday, I slept in, then played with CJ before her morning nap. We went to church (although CJ wasn't feeling very well so she and Jill came home early). I got to play the organ in sacrament meeting, and then substituted for the primary pianist during their run-through of the primary program today.

When I came home, Jill had been busy getting dinner ready and setting up our traditional scavenger hunt. I found this taped to the front door:

Which sent me to the Target cube that holds our Wii-motes, where I found this:

Which led me to the kitchen, where Jill recently added homemade chicken soup stock to the freezer:

Which led me to look behind the shower curtain, where I found another card with a note that said "Here's a quarter, nickel, and dime / It's just too bad it's not yours or mine".

Which led me to CJ's piggy bank where we drop in our change.

This clue was the hardest. I had to think back to a conversation Jill and I had about wanting to be more deliberate instead of accidental. The clue took me to this black box we have, that was mostly empty when we moved but somehow ended up on the floor next to the game cabinet - where it has remained. Inside I found:

CJ helped me unwrap the box. The picture below doesn't do them justice, but the one on the left is my new shoe! and the one on the right is my trusty dress shoes that I bought while working the 2008 campaign cycle. I think there's still a little life left in the old pair, but I am super excited about the spiffy new shoes to wear around my new corporate halls...

Then I opened some cards that I received in the mail. The ones below were from BYU-Idaho (a snail mail card and an e-card):

I also got a nice card from my grandparents that included some old photos of when we went to Camp Michigania when I was a wee lad. I had a blast both years I went. I think some of the younger cousins went recently; we need to swap stories.

Mom sent a card, too. She reminisced about the scavenger hunts, piñatas, and themed parties I had as a child.

My dad sent a funny card:

And I also got a card from some nieces and nephews:
(back/front)

Everybody wrote something =)
(inside)

My littlest sister, who's serving a mission in Florida for our church, sent me a funny card:
(inside it says "...Age is Relative")

I also got eCards from two Aunties:

and promptly added them to my Amazon account =) Thx Aunties!

But that's not all!

Jill put our food processor to much use today as she made some fabulous and delectable dishes for dinner and dessert.
Here she is slicing the potatoes for homemade zuppa toscana, a la Olive Garden (except better!).

She also made homemade breadsticks. Yum!

Just when I thought the evening couldn't get any better, she turned off the lights...



...started some mood music...



...and brought out a fancy, two-tiered cake that she made completely from scratch while singing Happy Birthday! (I happened to be on the phone with my dad at the time, so he joined in, too).

It was white cake with Nerds inside. Between the layers were chunks of kiwi. And it was frosted with a mango, buttercream frosting (with more Nerds).

I dove right in and quickly ate my way towards a sugar coma. Definitely ate too much, but couldn't help myself!

(Yes, Jill had some too - this wasn't just all me...) :-P

Spoke with family on the phone this evening and heard from a few friends.

All in all, a pretty incredible birthday, spent with my two favorite people.

Apparently a few things are straggling in the mail, so I look forward to extending this birthday clear through 'till Halloween ;-)

Round 5

Just can't get enough of my birthday... =)
Received lots of fun cards and other gifts from family. Here are a few fun cards:

Such a sweet card from my sister

(outside)

(inside)

And, amazingly, this card from my mom was delivered. 

Despite having no stamp. Or postmark. Or return address.

(envelope)

(card)

My dad thought he sent his card late. 

Interestingly, it was the first one I received.

(outside)

(inside)

And I got other nice cards from grandparents and aunties. =)

Round 4

I'm so special they always give me a long weekend for my birthday. I didn't have work today, but Jill did. I dropped her off, tweeted about them filming Transformers 3, went grocery shopping (used lots of coupons and saved nearly 50% at Safeway), came home and watched Future Weapons on Netflix while doing several sinks full of dishes and two loads of laundry.

Went back to get Jill from work. She took some other pictures from her building of them filming. (Will update with videos later). Made dinner while she ran to UPS to pick up two packages that failed to get delivered to our place.

Had yummy salad with some grilled steak and chipotle salsa ranch. Watched Sherlock Holmes on Netflix and started downloading our photos and documenting our experiences of the last few days.

Got an awesome new present today - I'll blog about it later. Stayed up too late blogging, and am now headed to bed.

I know some other gifts/cards are on their way from other folks. We'll keep dragging this birthday out all week if we have to ;-)

Round 3

The birthday celebration continued through to Sunday.

I forgot to mention that before we left for NYC I had received cards from many of my family members.

Got up, got ready for church, played the organ, helped in nursery, did singing time in nursery, and finished up third hour in elders quorum.

Singing time was fun. Learned some things. We started off with a "wiggle" song. I had them all stand up on their carpet squares, then told them to turn to the left so we could march in a circle. They were all facing different directions. Although they can remember the lyrics to a bunch of songs, apparently the concepts of left and right haven't sunk in yet. Our marching in circle looked like a little kid's soccer game, where everyone clusters around the ball.

We learned how music can make us happy and sang "If you're happy and you know it" and "No one likes a frowning face."

Next we learned how music can teach us about the world around us. We sang about the wheels on the bus and popcorn popping.

Last, we learned how music can teach us about Heavenly Father, and sang "I Am a Child of God."

When home teaching with Jill, then took a nap until dinner time. We were both pretty wiped out from our long ride back to DC.

Spoke with family members and had a yummy day-after-birthday meal.

Round 2

Jill slept in on Saturday, and I got up early to finish some church stuff before we left.

Another 'nother 'nother story. Let's just say some people aren't good at meeting deadlines.

Took the Bolt Bus from DC to NYC. Way better than our last bus trip to NYC on Greyhound (although, interestingly, the DOT info on the side of the bus said Bolt was operated by Greyound Lines; I've learned since that Bolt is a 50/50 venture by Greyhound and Peter Pan). The bus was new, the seats were nice, the ride was smooth, and overall it was pretty enjoyable - as far as 4-hour long bus rides go.

Except, don't sit in the exit row. Our seat rocked a little bit--like it wasn't bolted all the way to the ground--when the bus started and stopped.

We wandered up Avenue of the Americas, looking at stuff along the way. This trip--and last year--NYC threw a street fair for me. =) You can pretty much guarantee the same stuff on each block, but we found the occasional unique stall. Picked up a Christmas present for someone. Saw a Tigger running loose in the wild. And other furry characters that made lots of little kids excited.

Decided to forgo the fair-style food for a sit-down restaurant. Our email reminder about the concert recommended a few restaurants nearby and we decided to try Heartland Brewery. Our burgers were pretty yummy and the onion rings came with an awesome spicy fry sauce (no overwhelming horseradish taste like some onion dipping sauces), but apparently anything more than lettuce and a pickle (e.g., cheese, onions) was a high-priced addition to the ticket. Something to remember for the next time (if there is one). People watched for a bit from our restaurant perch, then took a quick stroll before heading to the theater.

Walked up to MoMA, but it had already closed. Which was ok, since we're kind of spoiled by all the free art museums here in DC. But the gift shops were still open and we had fun wandering around in there. Saw some cool salt-n-pepper wobblers; serving utensils designed not to touch the counter; nesting doll measuring cups; nesting bowls that include mixing bowl, sieve, and colander; cutting boards and holder with "filing tabs"; awesome crack-and-grow eggs (flowers or herbs); a birdy paperclip holder; propeller pens; books about custom bicycle makers (highlighting one in Portland, OR); the alarm clock that will hop off your dresser and roll away; an interesting magnetic perpetual calendar and clock; the blue sky umbrella; and the Spacepak toiletry bag.

The store started to close so we figured we'd walk back to Radio City Music Hall. Grabbed a quick picture with the poster on the way in and gave up our water bottles at the security check point... Grabbed our seats and waited for the show to begin!

Although Howard Shore wasn't here this time to talk about it, it was still a great concert. Some of the audience were annoying -- apparently different parts of the theater thought it necessary to clap whenever a character came on for the first time. Frodo. <clap> Sam. <clap> Saurumon. <clap> The Ents. <clap> Gollum. <clap>

Ugh.

All that clapping covered up the live music, which is what I thought we were there to hear.... anyway.

The concert got out around 11:30 and we wandered through Time Square. And kept wandering until we got back to Penn Station. Bought some water at KFC/Taco Bell and sat down inside until it was time to catch our Megabus back to DC. The bus had two levels of seating - but the driver informed us the bathroom was only on the first level. It was an obstacle course to walk through the aisles in general and we figured Jill didn't need to navigate stairs on the bus for the few times she'd likely get up on our ride back.

The bottom level contained a few places where seats sat facing each other and there was a little table (about 8 inches wide) between the seats. We sat across from two friends who had also come to NYC for the day for another concert. Learned they were from Columbia, MD; one was attending school at Temple, the other was at Penn State; both were freshman. It was funny listening to them talk about their trip and chat with friends on the cell phone on the ride back to Philadelphia. It was interesting seeing how different they were (one was a philosophy major, was mostly quiet and spoke intelligently; the other was an about-to-change-from-psychology-because-he-was-failing major who was into sports and built like he had played a few in high school). We talked later about how different we thought they were, but despite going to different colleges they stayed in touch and rode the bus across Pennsylvania to hang out. Philly was the first stop. We got to stretch our legs out once they left; we picked good seats. Next stop was Baltimore. I dozed on and off for most of this stretch. Checked my email a few times and watched out the window in the dark when I couldn't fall back asleep. Last stop was DC. Disembarked, found our car, and pulled into our driveway about 6:30 AM. Slept for an hour then got ready for a big day at church.

Great day with Jill.

(click through to see more photos)
Two days of fun experiences for my birthday.

Round 1

On Friday, Jill had a few surprises in store for my birthday weekend. We already had tickets for a concert in NYC and I wasn't expecting anything else.

She sent me a cryptic schedule of the evening's events - and after work we headed off for dinner. We made a quick stop along the way, but came away empty handed (that's another story), then pulled into the parking garage by one of my favorite places to eat around here.

There we bumped into some friends while waiting for the elevator. Strange, they live on the other side of town...

In the restaurant, we saw a few more people I recognized. I'm a quick study -- and realized Jill had arranged for some friends to meet us for dinner! =)

One of them was running a little late, but that's another 'nother story.

We had a great evening, and Chance managed to snap some photos while we were there.

From: 8 October 2010

Thanks everyone for a fun birthday dinner! (I'm glad "the Chances" were finally able to meet.)

Birthday Blog

We spent a day (10 October 2009) in New York City for my birthday.

Summary
* Bus ride there
* Museum
* Times Square
* Dinner
* Show (includes a link to my exclusive write-up)
* Bus ride home
* Photos
* Music Bonus
For those of you who might not read the whole thing, I'd say the Museum, Show notes, and Photos are the highlights, the meat-and-potatoes, if you will. Everything else is a vegetable side, parsley garnish, or dessert. I guess you can decide what's what for you...

oh-dark-thirty
We arrived at 6:30 am to catch the 7:30 am Greyhound bus to New York City / Port Authority. The lady taking tickets wasn't very nice in the morning; she ended up also being the bus driver. At first, I thought it was just us. But several people who got on the bus after us commented on how grumpy they thought she was.

11:30 am
Arrived in New York! We immediately walked down to Pier 86 and grabbed a hot dog from a street vendor. It was ok; we probably should have scouted around for some different hot dog options, but it hit the spot. (Especially because I forgot to eat breakfast).

12:00 pm
Picked up our passes and went to the USS Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum. We toured the USS Growler -- a cruise missile submarine that is now a floating museum. We squeezed through its narrow passageways and looked into the officer wardrooms, the mess, the bathing areas, the sonar rooms, the navigational and missile control rooms, and the torpedo rooms. It was fun to wander through; I wish they would have had more guides along the way to explain. Thankfully, I remembered some of the stuff I heard when I went on the USS Blueback tour at OMSI in Portland, OR. There were some tight spots on the tour to navigate - especially wearing the backpack we brought with our stuff. I really can't imagine living on this with dozens of other people; I bet they ran into each other all the time.

Next, we went onto the USS Intrepid herself. We wandered the flight deck and looked at the different airplanes they had there. There were US planes (F-4N, Huey, Cobra, and the A-12, among others. Check out the museum's virtual Air tour page here.)

As I've posted before, I love the Blackbird and think it is still one of the most incredible airplanes ever. For new airplanes, it's probably the Raptor, which I wrote about briefly here from our visit to the air show.

We climbed up the "island" (the command and control tower), saw the map rooms, radar stuff, and met some veterans who actually served on the Intrepid during World War II. One gentleman was an airplane mechanic. He told us how the average age aboard ship was 19 years old, and that he was 17 when he got on the ship. They didn't have "tours" back then -- you were on the ship until the war was over. He talked about the friends he made, and how he tries to keep in touch with those who are still living. Jill asked a question and he referred to her later as "the young lady" =)

We went to the side of the ship where we saw some big guns. Then inside the ship to the hangar where there were more airplanes, a demonstration of the "meatball" used for landing on the carrier, old instruction manuals, photos, a climbing net, and -- of course -- a flight simulator. We did this one -- although we both agreed we liked the one at the Smithsonian museum better. I almost forgot, they had a replica of one of the capsules from the US space program. It looked really tiny... I can't believe they fit two people in it and then dropped them back from space into the ocean inside it. The USS Intrepid fished one or two of these capsules out of the ocean.

Then, we did a quick walk through a Concorde jet that the museum had on the pier. It pretty much looked like a normal plane inside (although the cockpit seemed much larger than that of other passenger planes), but it was the outside that was neat. Another beautiful plane; sadly not in service any longer.

We wandered through the museum's gift shop on the way out, and saw the usual assortment of model airplanes, ships, military hats, space ice cream, and the like. They also had dog tags you could customize for purchase and some fancy collectibles.

3:30 pm
I think it was around 3:30 or 4 pm when we started the walk back towards Times Square. We wanted a snack, so we bought some bagels and shmear right across the street from the museum at a place called H & H Bagels. We knew it sounded familiar as we were walking over to it, and then realized when we came home (and looked it up) that H&H had been featured in You've Got Mail, Seinfeld, and How I Met Your Mother. We walked the bagels up to Times Square and ate them at a little red table while watching a production crew film a Bollywood movie. My bagel was very light and yummy.

4:00 pm
We went into the huge Toys'R'Us store in Times Square. It had a ferris wheel inside! We saw huge Lego sculptures (Empire State Building, Yankees hat, knights, hot dog vendors), T-Rex in the Jurassic Park section, a big Transformer, and tons and tons of toys. Pretty much all the toys you could imagine. The little kids were very excited. Oh, wait - so was I. Lego has some cool new lines =)

Then we went to the M&Ms World. We thought about getting Lindz something with the sassy green M&M on it, like this

or this

We ended up getting just a few dark chocolate peanut M&Ms from the huge wall of chocolate.


4:30 pm
We decided to start wandering closer to our eventual destination, which was over on The Avenue of the Americas. They had the whole street blocked off for a street fair. Vendors were selling hats, shirts, jewelry, bags, food, and other random things. We walked up and down several blocks of this, and I began to notice that some of the stalls appeared to be "franchised" -- for lack of a better word: same signage, same prices, same wares/food, etc. So, basically, we didn't need to walk up and down all the blocks, haha. There were a few "unique" stalls scattered around, although for the life of me the only one I remember was this reggae stall pumping out tunes...

We grabbed a kebab from a Greek Gyro stall manned by hombres hablando espanol. Thought about getting a smoothie or trying some chicken-on-a-stick, but decided that we just wanted to sit down for a bit.

5:00 pm (ish)
So we went to the most "New York" sit-down restaurant we could think of: Applebee's at 50th/Broadway. I know, I know, we should have tried to find something else. But at this point we were pretty tired and hungry, were looking for sit-down places, and remembered that we walked past this about a block away. The decor was very New York, haha, with Broadway and movie posters and decor.

Thanks to Mayor Bloomberg, chain restaurants (from fast food to sit-downs) post calorie information on the menu. I'm not sure what had more of an impact -- (1) the fact that Applebee's in NYC was more expensive than eating at The Capital Grille in DC (ok, I might be exaggerating a little bit, but not by much), or (2) seeing calorie information on the menu options, or (3) having snacked at the street fair just a little bit earlier -- but we ended up sharing a Santa Fe chicken salad. It was good to sit down for a bit.

5:50 pm
Started the walk back towards Radio City Music Hall to get in line for when the doors opened for our show -- The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring: Howard Shore's Complete Score Performed Live to Film.

Here are some of the websites about it:

• RCMH - LOTR Page
• LOTR in NY Main Page
• Doug Adams - Music of the LOTR - Official Blog

Basically, they had a huge movie screen that took up the whole stage at Radio City Music Hall. They projected the movie onto the screen and played the audio and FX tracks through the speakers in the hall. The music track was removed, and the music of the LOTR was performed live by what I believe was around 600 performing artists.

Performance by:
- 21st Century Symphony Orchestra (Official Home Page/LOTR Info Page),
- The Collegiate Chorale (Official Home Page/LOTR Info Page,
- Brooklyn Youth Chorus (Official Home Page/LOTR Info Page,
- Kaitlyn Lusk (Official Home Page/LOTR Info Page),
- conducted by Ludwig Wicki (Wikipedia Page [Google translated from German to English]/Ludwig Wicki

The awesome thing was that before the shot started, Howard Shore and Doug Adams (author of the soon-to-be released book, The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films) spent some time talking about the music, the themes, the instruments, and things to listen for during the show. It was so cool.

Click HERE for some of my notes from the concert.

We had some pretty decent seats, and really loved the show. The doors opened at 6pm, the pre-show talk started around 6:30, and the film began around 7:30. There was an intermission, and the show ended around 11pm.

a.w.e.s.o.m.e.

We wandered back through Times Square and hung out there for a little while while we waited for our bus back to Washington, DC. Took some photos of the Square at night.

Here are some pictures from the trip:


12:00 am
We were tired and done hanging out at Times Square, and figured that we'd be okay spending the next hour in the NY/Port Authority bus station. We were anticipating a 1:30am bus ride back to Washington, DC. You're supposed to arrive an hour early (for what reason, I have no idea, since it's not quite like getting into an airport and on an airplane...). We got there and some people were in line already. They were anticipating a 12:30am bus, but we were pretty sure they read the schedule wrong. (Although we secretly hoped there was an earlier bus).

Jill sat on a bag and closed her eyes for a bit while we waited. This was probably the longest hour and a half of the trip.

1:30 am
Boarded the bus and started the drive back to Washington, DC. I had napped most of the way to New York this morning, and ended up waking up around 3am. I alternated between looking out the window at the darkness, fidgeting, and trying to go back to sleep.

5:15 am
Arrived back at the Greyhound station in Washington, DC. Walked outside just as a cab drove by; flagged it down and took the quick trip over to Union Station where we had left the car in 24/hour-access parking. We're pretty sure the cab driver charged us an extra dollar or two that didn't seem to be justified on the fare card ... but we were too tired to argue.

5:30 am
Picked up our car and drove home

6:00 am
Went to bed.

11:00 am
Got up to get ready for Church.

12:15 pm
Got to Church to practice the organ before Sacrament meeting.

What a fun trip!

### (Random) Music Bonus ###
To sign off, I figured I'd follow-up my Billy Joel "New York State of Mind" post with some other New York-related songs. Here's what I found with a [[+song +lyric +"new york city"]] Google search:

• "New York City / Such a beautiful disease" (Norah Jones, "New York City")
• "Start spreadin' the news, I'm leaving today / I want to be a part of it: New York, New York." ("New York, New York")
• "I'm sittin' in this New York City... / Cause I don't know no New York City song" (Tanya Tucker, "New York City Song")
• Another rainy day in New York City / Softly sweet, so silently it falls / As crosstown traffic crawls / Memories [on] my way in New York City (Chicago, "Another Rainy Day in New York City")
• "Standing on the corner, just me and yoko ono, / ... / New York City! / New York City! / New York City! / Que pasa, new york? / Que pasa, new york? / Hey! hey!" (Yoko Ono, "New York City")
  
• And this was just in my head because of our Saturday trip: "Saturday in the park / I think it was the Fourth of July / People dancing, people laughing / A man selling ice cream / Singing italian songs / (fake italian lyric) / Can you dig it (yes, I can) / And I’ve been waiting such a long time / For Saturday ..." (Chicago, "Saturday in the Park")