Clearly, everything is going my way. Shortly before my birthday this year, they sent me to San Jose, CA to attend a state level convention and share information about some of the programs we are working on at the national office. Since my oldest (and now hairiest) child Jake shares a birthday with me and lives in the bay area, I was super excited. Icing on the cake, so to speak, was the fact that my beautiful niece Amanda, whose birthday is the same week, also lives in the area and offered to pick me up and drive me around!

After a quick stop at Lush to buy some necessary supplies, we picked up Jake and headed over the Amanda’s apartment. Amanda had stocked up on gourmet cupcakes so we would have  a birthday treat to go with our sangria. 

Soon my nephew Jason’s incredibly smart and sassy girlfriend Lindsey and we headed over to Burma Superstar for a Burmese dinner.

The food was amazing and for a nightcap we went to visit Jason at his job at Beer Revolution. I’m told that Oakland is the most exciting city in America. I believe that is true because on our way to see Jason, there were riot cops on every corner. Once we arrived, we tried some beers. I think you must be a real beer lover to appreciate those beers. They were very dark, heavy, and bitter. Not at all like the Corona I usually prefer!

Amanda drove me to San Jose so I could attend my convention. I checked into the Hilton and sacked out.

The convention was great, lots of good speakers and work and blah, blah, blah. The best part was when I received my Hello Kitty fruit basket from my friends back home! It arrived right before my presentation began, so I offered up fruit to anyone who would agree to give us high marks on the evaluation. Hope they consider evaluation results when they go looking for speakers next year!

When the convention ended, Amanda returned to pick me up. Since it was already so late in the day, we had to scrap our planned brunch and come up with some alternate plans. A quick stop at In N Out helped us to clarify our thinking.

We decided to visit St George Spirits, a distillery that offers tours and tastings and has a fantastic view of the San Francisco skyline.

During the tour our spirit guide told us lots of interesting things about how they distill liquor, none of which I retained. The part I do remember was tasting the absinthe. Boy howdy, did I enjoy the absinthe. I didn’t care too much for the gins and I was ambivalent about most of the vodkas, except for a few of the sweeter ones (go figure!)

Afterwards we stopped by Extreme Pizza to watch Jake work and pick up what was actually  the most delicious pizza I have ever had. Seriously, I had no idea he could make pizzas like that or I might have enjoyed his teenage years a whole lot more! 

We went back to Amanda and Kyle’s house and Jason and Lindsey joined us for dinner and spirited round of Cards Against Humanity. Several bottles of wine later I was sleeping through Game of Thrones so Kyle and Amanda decided to drop me off at the hotel near the airport so I could catch my crack of dawn flight home the next day. Couldn’t have asked for a nicer birthday!