I turned 41 on Friday. Hubby John was having a hard time with the nausea associated with his treatment – so we haven’t done anything at all to celebrate. My gramma sent a card and so did my friend Sharon, and I got wonderful calls from my mom, my brothers, and my uncle. My friends Bev and Carol and Kate called. Bev sent me a really beautiful Indian tablecloth all in white, red and green. Carol sent a flyswatter with a big fake daisy on it, and a little box with a Klimt reproduction on the cover, and one of her signature cakes – which is all John will eat, even today. I got a bunch of ecards and notes from friends online, and two of my groups even made special birthday pages for me.<\/p>\n
I really had no reason to feel so sorry for myself – especially since I’m really bad about remembering other people’s birthdays – but it didn’t stop me.<\/p>\n
I moped around most of the day, taking care of house and home – but after everyone went to sleep, I had a couple of Hornsby ciders and watched “Love Actually.” I had been saving it, and it was worth the wait. What a terrific movie! I laughed, I cried, I completely enjoyed it.<\/p>\n
Then, at about 1:20 or so, I flipped through the stations and landed on one of those late late shows just as Dinosaur Jr. was about to play. I nearly had a heart attack. When I was in college, my boyfriend was their manager for a while. They had all grown up together in Amherst, and I knew them when they were still Dinosaur. My friend Artie (who I would dearly love to hear from again) was the face they used for the sun on one of the album covers. Yes, it was still albums then. <\/p>\n
They busted up sometime in the late 80’s. I was shocked that they were kicking off a reunion tour – not least because of what I had heard through the grapevine about the troubles of my favorite of the guys – Pat Murphy, the drummer. Then, an even bigger shock – J Mascis appeared to have bleached his hair blonde! Carol had told me that he had gone grey, and I was hoping to see those long grey locks – not some Garth-attack! I couldn’t even see his face – only the edges of his glasses. It may have been a postmodern parody, but the song was not recognizable. It seemed to me that J missed a cue, maybe even most of the song. I could just imagine hearing that familiar refrain after a set – J shaking his head and saying “we fu**ing sucked.” <\/p>\n
In all these years, this was supposedly their first television appearance (I’m not sure that’s true). I don’t think J ever liked me much, and I didn’t really even get to know Lou. Pat was the one who talked with me. Still, it was somehow like seeing old friends – I was filled with affection for all of them. I hope the tour is fantastic, and that they come to Atlanta. It would drag me out of the house if anything would. <\/p>\n
After all, it was a pretty decent birthday present.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What I did on my birthday – Dinosaur Jr and Love Actually <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virushead.net\/vhrandom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}