This week we welcomed the newest member of our family… the new bed! My hook-up over at Simmons got us a sweet deal on a new bed of choice. It was factory-direct so we got it at cost, as they say in the bed biz. The tag on the bed says “Date Assembled: 1/30/12” which of course was like six days ago, so you know it’s good and comfy. The bed was delivered on Lauren’s birthday, so I like Lauren to think of it as a birthday gift to her simply because it happened to arrive on that day.
That day was a wild day for me. I ordered Lauren flowers and paid an extra fee for expedited delivery, 100% guaranteed to arrive before 12:00pm. At 1:00 I checked the tracking and noticed the order had not even been confirmed by the local florist, so I got on the phone and bitched someone out (I like to use a fake voice for those situations) and within an hour Lauren had some fancy ass flowers at her desk and was likely the envy of all the others in the office.
I left work at 1:45 and headed home to wait for the bed delivery, which was scheduled between 2 and 6. I continued to work from home, which was difficult as a major e-mail was scheduled for the following morning and I was forced to communicate via IM with co-workers. At 5:00 the delivery arrived, and when the door opened, out shot Baxter down the stairs to freedom (for the second time that day). He was corralled in eventually and the delivery men put the bed in place.
But the fun was just beginning, as I was meeting Lauren downtown near her work for her birthday dinner at Wink restaurant. Many locals complain about Austin traffic, but to this point I thought it was much better than Minneapolis as my daily commute of 11 miles goes east to west and rarely takes over 25 minutes. I guess I don’t ever drive north-to-south during rush hour though. After sitting idly on Mopac for 20 minutes, I got off and took side roads which were even slower and more difficult to get off. It was painstaking sitting several cars back, not moving, and seeing green lights turn a dozen times without any cars moving through with poor birthday wife waiting. I trudged feet at a time through UT campus before finally arriving at the restaurant after 10 miles and over 90 minutes. Lauren had been hanging out patiently at the bar waiting and soon we celebrated a very tasty birthday dinner.
The next night we celebrated once again, this time with an outing downtown to the new German bar Easy Tiger with many of our local friends. This bar has a big outdoor beer garden area with lots of picnic tables. When we first arrived they were all full, so we stood around waiting for one to open. Finally we beat out another group to an open half of a table, sat down, ordered some beer and food, and then the rains came and everyone ran for cover, leaving us alone in the beer garden. Since we had food on the way, we stuck it out and got good and wet. All told there were 16 people who showed up… quite a successful birthday event! Thanks to Rob for driving so Lauren and I could celebrate even harder.
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