Stella!!!

This weekend was my "birthday weekend", something that Julie and I have done for the last couple of years, I guess just since our birthdays have been falling on or near the weekend. Since my birthday is Monday this weekend was the birthday weekend and, therefore, I got to decide what we did, what we ate, etc. Pretty cool. She'll do the same for her birthday in July. Saturday we went and had dinner at Stella's Fish Cafe in Uptown. Awesome meal. Today we went to the auto show downtown and then just chilled at home this evening, enjoying a blizzard from Dairy Queen and getting caught up on some of our shows we've recorded. All in all it was a great birthday weekend! Julie got me a couple of nice shirts, a pair of golf shorts, a couple DVDs and a wild bird feeder. We tried the bird feeder thing last year and it didn't go so great, so we'll try it again this spring. One thing that was really cool is that Julie hid my presents around the house and I had to go find them. It was like an adult Easter egg hunt!! Way cool!

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Last night I had kind of a freaky dream and the only people I recognized were me and my dad. It was very "24" like the TV show - it had what I think was a nuclear bomb, some refinery was on fire, almost very end-of-the-world, really dark and tense. I was an adult in my dream and my dad was being very brave and fatherly, taking care of me and the others that were there - again, no one I knew. While I woke up feeling a little rattled at the images in my dream I had a deep sense of calm that my father was there taking care of me. It's been 5 1/2 years since my dad passed away and it was really nice to feel that connection again so strongly, even if it was in a dream. I think of him often and miss him dearly. It's so true - you don't know what you've got 'till it's gone.

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I've started keeping a tablet and pencil next to the bed so I can start writing things down when I wake up in the middle of the night. Quite often I was thinking that I should write down what I'm thinking about when I wake up at 3 AM. It's funny how the mind will work and how clear something will be when you're roused from a deep sleep and equally frustrating at not remembering what that was when the alarm goes off 3 hours later. So, I've started writing down what's on my mind at these crazy hours. Some of it will appear here, the better stuff that floats to the top. If I could only read my writing!!

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An interesting entry in the Guiness Book of World Records:
Who: Michel Lotito, Grenoble, France. Achievement: Has been eating metal and glass since 1959; currently he eats more than two pounds of metal every day. Since 1966 he has eaten 10 bicycles, a supermarket food cart, 7 televisions, 6 chandeliers, a coffin, and a Cessna airplane.

On that note, caio.