Monday, January 16, 2006

The First Half of the Weekend

I’m currently sitting in a coffee shop.  I’m trying the whole “coffee shop novelist” thing on for size.  For the most part it seems to be working pretty well.  Until the manager showed up and started talking to the barista about work, employees and general coffee shop drama.  Coffee shop drama doesn’t help when I am typing novel drama. 

Hill Billy Hoedown
This weekend has been all about Freeman and his birthday.  In celebration we’ve taken a four day weekend.  Thursday night we went to the Tractor Tavern for a hoedown.  We went to see the Hackinsaw Boys and Railroad Earth The Hackinsaw Boys were awesome.  I’d love to get some of their music to work out to.  Railroad Earth was another story completely.  Where as the first band rocked out and had the whole place jumping and singing along, the second was quiet and mellow.  They had refined their sound so much, I felt like I could have just bought a CD and stayed home(thought it probably would have cost me more.) Though I am sure they have a large fan base, there were a lot of people who seemed to be very familiar with their work, I quickly grew bored.  After the “meat” of every song they continued to “jam” on for 8-10 minutes and each time it sounded just like the time before. 
While the band didn’t entertain me, the crowd sure did.  It was an eclectic mixture of hippies and hill billies, of old and young, of sober and not so sober.  In watched people move their bodies in ways that seemed uncomfortable and at the same time sit right in with the music.  One lady got right in front of us during the second set.  The song was something about a pretty bird, and you could see that she really took the song to heart.  She got right up to the stage and gestured at the lead singer, attempting to get his attention.  It was clear that this woman was inebriated, though by what wasn’t so obvious.  Life had taken it’s toll on her. 
Her actions had started to make some of the people near us a bit angry.  To diffuse the situation, I looked at one and said, “Oh look!  A pretty bird!” He laughed and said a couple of the lines from the song back to me.  From that point he would look at her, look at me and start laughing. 
We didn’t stay for the whole show.  I think we saw most of it, but we were starting to get tired and it was getting late.  We headed home.

The Garage
Friday was Vanessa’s birthday.  Vanessa was born 12 hours before Freeman and they have been friends since childhood.  We met up with her at the Garage on Capital Hill for some drinks, bowling and fun.  We had all three!  I was able to score above 50 on all three rounds, though by the end I was having problems carrying, let alone aiming the ball.  I managed to get a few strikes (I thin perhaps 3 in all) and I might have closed out a frame or two, but for the most part my bowling was atrocious. 
We were quite intoxicated and Freeman had decided to treat me to a cab ride home (we had taken the bus up there, no worries we don’t drive drunk) when Vanessa decided her husband would be happy to take us home.  This was news to him, but he obliged and drove us home.
We arrived safe and sound.
They came up for a few minutes when the true reason for them driving us home.  Vanessa wanted to stick around until midnight when it was officially Freeman’s birthday.  Midnight rolled around, and they left shortly after. 

The birthday
I had asked Freeman if he wanted a cake for his birthday.  He told me that he did.  So Saturday morning I got up and went to the store.  I picked up fixens for breakfast and the ingredients I would need to bake a birthday cake.  I came home, cooked up breakfast and started on the cake.  It turned out really nicely.  It was a layered chocolate cake with peanut butter chocolate frosting. 
His mom came up and went to lunch for his birthday.  We didn’t go out Saturday night.  We decided that two nights out were enough for one weekend.