birthday bashed

This was a great weekend. Went to Iowa City Friday night, got back to Muscatine this morning. Friday I came up for a show at Public Space One. Daughters of the Sun and Sarah Johnson from Minneapolis played. It was good to see Cole and those guys again. We had nice little reunion. I don't think the Iowa City crowd was too into them and they didn't play the best show ever either, but still I wouldn't ever get too bummed out by the lack of reaction from an Iowa City crowd. Nothing against the town or the people, I love em both. But they can be a little tough to win over, I guess. Anyways, got a little drunk, tried to wrestle Jeff, became a "slimey chud" (which is apparently a compliment), gave my keys to Shawn and I crashed on his couch but not before talking about girls until 2 a.m. and the having a conference call with Kevin on speakerphone for the next hour. I guess Shawn and Kevin stayed on the phone till 4:30 a.m. after I passed out. Talking about the scene and frustrations, etc.

Was going to get breakfast with the Daughters of the Sun fellas the next morning but they took off early for Chicago to try and get ahead of the weather. Went to lunch at Masala's with Shawn and his folks, had some great buffet and then went and got my hair done by Michelle at the G-Spot. Michelle's a nice girl, an old Muscatiner. She was there for the '05 birthday fiasco. After the haircut I tried to do some shopping for xmas. Needed to get gifts for my bros kids. Did not want to drive to Coralville. Iowa City must only possess one snow plow. The roads were shit and just did not want to get involved in that mess. Michelle and random G-Spot patron recommended I check out the White Rabbit across the street from Record Collector, I could find some cute clothes for the kids there they said. I was going to Record Collector anyhow so I popped in to check it out. Ended up getting a tiny shirt for Eva, the newest niece; it's blue and has a cassette tape on it. I wanted to get this vintage checkered coat for Alexandra but it was too much money for something she probably wouldn't like anyways, and I know her parents wouldn't have liked it. But the coolest thing about the White Rabbit is that it has this homing beacon that signals every cute 22 year old girl in town towards it. The only bad part is they bring their parents to help them buy all those cool vintage clothes and scarves. Can't ever have too many scarves, I guess. Don't they know I have a job now and can buy them all the scarves they need? Oh well. So xmas shopping was kind of a failure.

Birthday shopping for myself, however, at the Record Collector was a great success! Here's a list of the LP presents I picked out for me:

Night Wounds on Woodsist, artwork by Shawn

Jack Rose - Kensington Blues

Om - Live at Jerusalem

Smashing Pumpkins - Gish

My Bloody Valentine - Loveless

A pretty stellar haul, if I do say so myself. Much thanks to me for having great taste. After that I walked back to Shawn's. We sorta bummed around for a while till about 5 and then decided to brave the cold and go out to Mormon Trek to get some coffee and hang with Kevin. Kevin and I talked about drafting Tempest while Shawn got bored and talked to some girl on the phone for a while, trying to arrange a quick hang before the party. Kevin ended up getting off an hour early and we gave him a ride back since he thought it was an awesome idea to walk to work. By this time it was excruciatingly cold so it was fortuitous that he got off when he did. We drop off Shawn at the girl's place, go back to Kevin's so he can change and then we go back and pick up Shawn. It was really only about a 20 minute hang he had with this girl. They dated for a few months and broke up once he got back from tour. Not quite sure what the point of the hang was. Apparently Shawn's a stud.

So it's cold as fuck out. Not sure if I mentioned that. But we weren't going to drive because it's Iowa City and there's point. Prior to the bar we were meeting up with a few folks at the Sanctuary for dinner. Shawn, Kevin, and I walk/wrestle our way to dinner, meet up with Sarah, Tama, and a few others to eat. Everyone's still complaining about having to go to One Eyed Jake's and some are refusing to go if there's a cover. So it was probably for the best anyhow, we end up going to the Deadwood. It was an excellent time, drank lots of beer, didn't get too out of hand, saw a lot of people, further developed my crush on blonde Deadwood waitress, maintained my birthday promise of not blacking out or going to jail, a straight up success. We ended up going to a house party after bar. Don't know whose house but that was cool. Saw a few more people I knew, put some drunk kid to bed who had passed out in the upstairs hallway (see facebook for picture of said kid), creeped out some girls by sitting uncomfortably close to them on the couch much to the delight of my friends, tried to leave with some furniture, continued success. Except for the Matt Francis part. I could kinda worried that we left him at the party but he made it back to Shawn's just fine. Then I passed out on Shawn's couch again. Didn't even have much of a hangover this morning.

So I'm pretty happy with the way the evenings turned out. It's funny, I saw that kid in the hallway and I couldn't help but think about how that used to be me, all the time at every party. Probably why I helped him out, even though I'm sure whosever bed that was was probably pissed.