Another birthday has come and gone and as the weekend turns to the usual Mad Hatter’s dance that is our usual week here in Greater Metropolitan East Raleigh, I’m once again struck by just how truly blessed I am with amazing loved ones and friends enough to fill Scrooge McDuck’s mightiest gold vault.
I appreciate every one of the good wishes and positive vibes and will endeavour to respond personally when I can spend some quality time with the notifications list!
The Gordon Lightfoot tribute kind of put me behind schedule and definitely took a bit out of me emotionally and I can only hope Gord appreciates just how much of an impact he’s had on me through the years!
So never fear…it may take a bit but I do plan on making my way through that list as quickly as I am able! 🙂
Whether we have a bit of a chin wag on a daily basis or we don’t see each other for years, please know that I cherish each and every one of you as the treasure that you are to me and enjoy following your adventures and triumphs and hopefully offer a rather broad shoulder (that my mother likely had very colourful Hungarian phrases for during a rather interesting time at Womack Army Hospital so many years ago!) for those who may be of need of it.
The day’s celebration started off with a welcome bit of staying in bed until well after sunrise which was a decided change from the usual “go to sleep at 0300 and wake up at 0600-0630”! A hot bath and some quality time on the keyboard and before I knew it was time to head off to Clayton so we could retrieve Julia’s van from the garage.
We had some time to play with after that so we went our separate ways and I got some brief airplane therapy at the RDU observation park but sadly had missed the American 777-200 arriving from London about half a hour earlier. Bummer!
I ended up cutting the therapy session short and headed home to await Nicholas getting home from work and check out the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix qualifying session before it was time to head back out and collect everyone for dinner.
After a rather mercilous interrogation last weekend by two people who refused to take no for an answer, I had found a place I wanted to try out downtown at the Transfer Co Food Hall on Davie Street…Che Empanadas.
Nice thing about this venue is that there are plenty of options to choose from if empanadas aren’t your thing.
That’s why you’ll see me chowing down on some jerk chicken tacos from Dank Burrito!
Yes, you read that right…they actually named the place Dank Burrito! The funny thing is that the first time I heard of the place was when Katie had a dance competition in Morehead City and we happened to see their original joint on US-70. We ultimately ended up at a bento box joint across the hotel car park but figured at some point we’d go Dank. Who would have known that a pandemic and Katie choosing other things to do than dance for me to finally try Dank Burrito that just happened to be in the venue I’d chosen by random.
So yes…targeted ship, sank truck! But in a good way! 🙂
Mind you, Che Empanadas were happy enough with us as we ended up hitting them twice and oh my, the “al pastor” (pork and pineapple) was easily my favourite with “al limon” (beef with lemon) being a close second.
Never would have imagined being both dank and Argentinian in the same meal but there you go!
You can add a bit of Floridian when the key lime pie made a very welcome appearance for dessert! 🙂
Later, I’d be introduced to the new game obsession called “Azul”. It reminds me of an interesting mix of elements of “Oh Wah Ree” (collection of random tiles in several pots in the centre of the table) combined with filling in a five-by-five grid in a reverse Mah Jong with a scoring system where you move a small black square block much like you’d peg scores in cribbage.
The idea is to fill varying length lines on the left with a single flavour of tile which then fills in the corresponding block in that row in the grid. Scoring happens after every round where contiguous blocks can really help your scoring and the game ends when someone fills one row in their grid horizontally.
It sounds simple and in some ways it can be but the possibilities of being screwed or returning the favour to your opponents is endless and somehow I managed to win the game despite only seeing it played once (and not having any more clue then than I did tonight!) but I have no doubt that’ll probably be the last time I ever do win at it. But it won’t stop me from trying anyway… 🙂
At that point, it was time to call it an evening with one more trip to Clayton and a bit of a mauling by Mistletoe which I enjoyed but don’t tell *HER* that before finally making it back home.
It was a somewhat busy and hectic birthday but an enjoyable one nonetheless!
And now it’s time to enjoy another trip round our closest star! Hope to see you here again next year! 🙂
