Tomorrow we are heading to Spain. This is our big family vacation we do each year, so all 19 of us will converge in Barcelona for 5 nights. Daniel and I are going one night early so we can beat jetlag and be prepared to help everyone else on arrival day. Stephen went early with his family to London and Paris and will end in Barcelona. My parents will be in and out, and everyone else disperses at the end of the trip. Daniel and I head south to Seville, Grenada, Andalusia area, then up to Madrid then home.

I'm pretty excited. I've been trying to kick this stupid cough for like 4 weeks now. Originally I had a sore throat, cough, stuffy nose after traveling to California for Megan's graduation. And that went on so long that I finally went to a doctor who said I probably had the flu, but now it was like a pneumonia bacterial infection, so I did a round of antibiotics. I'm still not 100% better so I went back to the doctor and she said it was just post-infectious lingering cough. She gave me steroids to help kick it faster, so now I'm roid raging. Better than coughing on an airplane for 10 hours. I have cough drops, a cough suppressant pill, and a mask if that should become a problem, but I'm feeling better today finally.

I try not to make my blogs just a recounting of every medical malady I encounter. But that's pretty much the narrative now. While we are away I will be turning 45 years old. I am not bringing my book of secrets with me because it would be a little heavy, so I'll have to read my 1, 5, and 10 year predictions when we get home. The 10 year predictions have been pretty wildly inaccurate. I couldn't begin to predict what will be going on 10 years from now so I stopped trying. I filled the book and that will be the only volume in existence. It was a fun activity for a decade or so.

Okay, who knows, I might even take a picture when I'm in Spain and post it here. I try to take at least one picture per day when I'm traveling, that's my goal. I also said I was going to try to take a picture of as many obscure locations as possible for maximum views on Google Maps so maybe I'll remember to do that. Wish me luck and I'll czech you all on the flip side!

I wasn't going to blog today since I already posted a picture of our new faucet locks. But then I realized what today is. Today is the 22nd anniversary of when I started working at my job. It's an odd anniversary to take special note of but this one seems poignant because I was 22 years old when I started working there. Okay, technically I was like 22 years and 11 months old, but still, this marks the year when I have worked there just as long as I haven't. That's wild.

What could I go back and tell that kid after his first day? I'll never forget getting there in my recently purchased Sears suit, and sitting in a conference room all day learning the most pointless orientation facts. They let us go early, but suggested we all go sit at our desks, set up our new laptops, and fill out some HR paperwork. I had neither a laptop nor a desk to sit at, so I said, "Should I just sit in the bathroom until 5?" Then I laughed and walked out the door and went home.

When my mom got home I was doing the backstroke in the pool and she screamed, "Did you get fired on your first day?!" And I said no, I just ... left. Ha. Although, I just went back to 2004 to read my first blog after starting my job and I said that my parents were out of town and would be until Friday, which kept me from having to answer a million questions when I get home. So either my parents left on a Tuesday or my memory of that day is entirely fabricated. Oh well, I'm certain that exchange took place at some point. But alas, I never did get fired and 22 years later I'm still going strong.

I guess I wouldn't really have any solid advice for me at age 22. I pretty much did it my way and it worked out. That's half charm, half privilege. And it got me where I wanted to be, so I guess I would just give the same advice I always say I'd give if I could time travel, "It all turns out okay."

I keep telling myself I need to be more narrative on my refreshed blog. I used to document the most meaningless things but they are more fun to read years later than anything monumental that I might otherwise remember. So here we go.

Two weekends ago, we drove my parents up to Oklahoma City for our niece Ann Marie's college graduation. She got her undergrad in 3 years with a 4.0 average. That apple fell nowhere near my tree! She is immediately going back to get her masters. So impressed. We stopped at Winstar on the way home and all pooled our money into a high stakes slot machine. I think it was like $30 per pull. After a few pulls, we hit a mildly good reward, doubled our money, and cashed out. I was happy to stop there but after lunch my mom wanted to gamble just a little bit more, so Daniel and I each put a hundy into a nearby machine and promptly frittered away not only our winnings but as much in losses. C'est la view.

Then last weekend, we hung out with the Allistralian. We had a great time getting to know her daughter who is gregarious to say the least. Her husband is addicted to AI, on a level far beyond what I've described. And he only uses it with the microphone like a conversation. And he always adds a ton of extra info. "I am sitting here with my wife and she is giving me a dirty look because she thinks I use AI too much, anyway, how do I heat up a chicken breast?" So funny.

Now we're sitting here wasting time until we can head to DFW for a flight to Sacramento. Now Michael's daughter Megan is graduating high school. We did have a super early flight but then AA moved it several hours later, so we won't have a huge buffer to get there and get situated, but should still have plenty of time without rushing -- IFFF our flight takes off on time. The last time we did this a couple years ago we just sat and sat and sat in the airport until we missed Kelsey's graduation and arrived at like 10pm. So we'll see.

Oh, in other news, we THINK we saw Muffin with a baby. At least we for sure saw her touching noses and letting a baby squirrel climb all over her. If it wasn't her baby then I don't think she would be doing that. We whistled at her to come get a treat, and the baby noped the fuck out of here, and Muffin sauntered over and enjoyed lunch. I wish she was training her babies to come to us so we could get some generational squirrel insurance.

Before we begin -- everyone did realize that all of those people in the picture from yesterday were also celebrating their birthdays, right? Right? I've had a few people who thought I just threw together random celebrities and my friend Kevin to make myself a birthday poster or something. Sometimes I overestimate you people.

Speaking of overestimation ... my birthday. Good things first. Started getting phone calls, text messages, IMs and comments on my webpage and myspace starting at midnight and continuing throughout the day. I was pleasantly surprised by how many people remembered (my constant reminders having very little to do with it I'm sure). So thank you to everybody who made me feel special yesterday.

Great birthday. About the birthnight, though.... I won't use any names because nobody especially did anything wrong, it was just the sheer number of people who crapped out on me that it almost reduced me to putting on pajamas and taking 24 tequila shots in bed. I had people tell me they were tired. I had people tell me they had no money. I had people just say, 'Noooooo I'm not going out.' Somebody said they couldn't go and then called back and said, 'My other friend just invited me out so now I'm going.' Some people did just the opposite fervently promising to make an appearance only to call and say they'd changed their minds. Those are the ones that did call, some just never showed. Some people wouldn't even answer their phones or return text messages and voicemails. Talk about demoralizing.

Birthdays are just about my favorite thing in life. It's just such a perfect thing to celebrate. It's one day of the year that is uniquely yours despite the fact that you probably share it with 1/365th of the world. I have always bent over backwards to make sure my friends have good birthdays. I've dropped hundreds of dollars on gifts and parties and booze. I've gone out even when I'm tired, even when I'm poor, even when I have to work the next day. And I don't do it because I expect a reward in return; I do it because I truly enjoy it. I just thought given the circumstances that at least one of my friends might do the same for me. Apparently I was wrong.

Ooooor was I? Enter knights in shining armor. H■■■■■■ and his boyfriend Sean, who had not planned on venturing out last night, but upon hearing that it was my birthday decided to go, and ultimately take me out. I had so much fun with them. The belt was scrolling "ITS MAH BIRFDAY" all night long. I met Rocky who was also celebrating his 24th birthday. How fun is that? Drank a lot. A lot. I spent the night on Hag's couch and woke up deliciously hungover around 1:00 to drive home. I took this whole day off from work, which is so fun. I gotta skip work more often.

So all in all, I would put this one in the win column. This blog seriously just took me nearly 6 hours to write. I have been falling asleep periodically all day long. Best day ever. Czech you skillets later.

Well, here it is, without warning ... a little something I like to call SideshoViD.com Version 8. I woke up this morning, decided I didn't want to go to work but that instead I wanted to redo my webpage, and I did just that. Its almost midnight now and I'm just finishing up. So far this layout has been met with mixed reviews, but I don't care, I like it. SVC has always been about metamorphoses and reinvention. Who wants the same old webpage version after version just in different colors? I always try to take a radical departure from each of my old layouts.

Anyway, hopefully some of you find this one at least the smallest bit amusing. Leave me some comments and let me know what you think. I'm about to go watch a movie with Allison now but she is already drunk because she graduated college today. Yay. Congrats to her. Later, have nots.

Greetings from the land of 21. First let me thank everyone who attempted to call me on my birthday. If you forgot, good news: I'll never know. My cell phone, apparently, was telling everyone that, "This VoiceStream customer is no longer in service." My feelings got progressively more hurt as the day went on because NO ONE had called me. So around 10:00 I decide to call my parents to find out what the dillyo, and they were like "DAVID! HAPPY BIRTHDAY! WE'VE BEEN CALLING ALL DAY!" And then I called Ms. Allison and got about the same reaction, so that made me feel better. Like I said, if you didn't call, just say you did and make me feel special.

So what did I do this weekend. Well first, me and Todd drove to Kevin's apartment. We had to take two detours on our way there because of the severe flooding all around San Antonio. You should have seen the Guadalupe River. My god, the thing was beyond swollen, it was crazy. We eventually made it to Kevin's, and he worked until about 10 that night. And as soon as he got home and we all got ready we went out to a pool hall called Bradley's. There were a bunch of Kevin's friends there as well as Todd and my friend Will from College Station. We got there around 11:00 and the door girl said she couldn't count me and Kevin as over cause it wasn't midnight yet. So we got big black X's marked on our hands. At midnight, we went back to the door and some guy in charge told us it would be okay if we went to the bathroom and washed the X's off our hands and then served us a free beer. The drinks then ensued. I had a load of beers, and one shot, which naturally, was a Four Horsemen. Thats a damn stout shot. I can get sufficiently drunk off just that. We tried to play a little pool, but that proved difficult. Kevin could hardly hit the cue ball. And this is all by 2:00 cause that was closing time.

Then we went back to Kevin's pad and had a little party with everyone. I don't know exactly what happened, but I know I was drinking all night, and I somehow out lasted everyone at the apartment. I was so drunk but I was up and watching a movie and everyone else was asleep or had gone home. So I went to bed and got around 4 hours of sleep before I got up on Saturday. I was so damn hungover it wasn't even funny. And it was one of those wonderful 24 hour kind of hangovers. So I felt like shit all day long. Saturday night we went to Fox and Hound and had a couple beers, nothing too fancy. Everyone had already kicked off the party that night back at Kevins. When we got there, I had no choice but to take a nap. My head was pounding and all the lights and noise was too much. So I fell asleep for a couple hours and then rejoined the party. It was kinda fun cause they were t-rashed and I wasn't drunk. And as an added bonus, I wasn't hungover this morning when I had to drive home.

This morning we woke up and got ready to come back to College Station. We said our goodbyes and left San Antonio around 3 after we had a little lunch. We decided to take some new and improved way home, I'm not sure what possessed us. But we ended up in Austin, and I called Will and asked him how the hell to get back to CS from there. Thank god we finally got here, and just a shade over 4 hours later. Oy! But I am back, and thanks again to everyone who left a comment or tried to call. You're all beautiful. It was especially good to hear from Joseph, who has been AWOL all summer. He'd best be keeping in touch if he knows whats good for him. And that's the name of that tune. Peace out, you have nots, stay in school.