Benny's 32-Hour Birthday Festivus

I'm not talking about a birthday festivus that the celebration goes into the night and lasts more than 24 hours. I'm talking about a birthday that starts at say, 12:01am on Sep 12, and 32 hours pass before the clock strikes 11:59pm on Sep 12.

It was the definitely the longest birthday I've ever had, and I celebrated it with three of my favorite women.

Olivia helped my start off my birthday celebration by singing to me at 5am and letting us know the party needed to start. Then Michelle chimed in and started singing too, except Michelle's singing was more in tune (Olivia has some work to do).

After we had breakfast at Chili's in Yokosuka, we packed our bags and were off to the airport in Narita. Our lunch celebration included takoyaki, noodles, and biru (beer). Once we boarded our flight, there was another biru served to help me celebrate (thank you United for serving Kirin on your international flight without charging a dime - unfortuntaly it was overshadowed by the $80 fee for checking four bags). The beer almost made up for the movie selection (Star Trek, Dragon Ball Z, something else similar to Dragon Ball Z, and something else we weren't interested in staying awake to watch). Besides, we had to entertain Olivia for five hours. And as long as she was entertained, she was happy.

We tried to get Olivia to sleep, but she only fell asleep after five hours in the air of a nine-hour flight. The airline gave us a giant bowling ball bag that they referred to as a bassinet for Olivia. She did not like being in it because she could not roll around and she could not see all the friendly faces smiling at her. She also probably didn't like the smell of all the feet, since the only place the bassinet could go was under our feet.

We landed at LAX and surprise, surprise, missed our connection to San Diego. We were on standby for the next flight and I asked the clerk if we were going to be able to get on since boarding had started for the 1:35pm flight. Michelle had stepped away to call her sister and use the facilities... but that was 15 minutes ago and she was no where to be found. I asked the airline rep to page her. "Michelle Volkmann, please report to gate 42, you have one minute to board before the gate will be closing!" One minute, holy schnikies - I didn't know there was only a minute left to board! They had not announced the final call yet, and I started to think we were going to have to wait for the 5:30pm flight.

After landing in San Diego and picking up the rental car, we had lunch at Ricardo's Very Mexican Cafe in Del Mar. Then we met up with our Yuma-turned-FOUR-friend Andrea at the Coffee Bean in Solona Beach. Another birthday present for Benny: really very good Mexican food and really good coffee.

In the 29th hour of the birthday festivus, we headed to Applebees for some chicken wings and Fat Tire. We were amazed at how many places were closed at 9pm, and Applebees was the only place open in the area. Our waiter had the gumption to mock Olivia's Minnesota Vikings bib ("why don't you get her a bib for a real team, like the Chargers?"), but he made up for it with a birthday cake dessert complete with a candle to blow out. I'm easily won over sometimes.

When the clock struck midnight, 32 hours had passed in our day. It was an awesome birthday, thanks to Michelle, Olivia, and Andrea. Thanks for voice messages, emails, and Facebook messages too.