Birthday in the Lone Star State

I realized as I finished up my birthday this week that I don't ever remember being away from home on the actual day of my birthday. Home in my life is a relative term and could have been my parent's house, or wherever I was living at the time. But, I don't know that I've ever been on vacation or on a work trip. So, it was interesting to be on a work trip over my birthday. Thankfully the trip that it happened to be was with the greatest people on earth - my fellow CTPers. The one thing about our CTP meetings is that we tend to have a lot in common because it's such a weird job. Since I've now been with them for 4 years, it wasn't as if I was on a random trip without a lot of friends around, and in fact it was quite fun!

The day started off rather early. Mom was the first person to wish me happy birthday (which is pretty normal :) ). We happened to be headed out for a field trip that morning, so I got a lovely boat trip with birding as my birthday morning. We saw whooping cranes (or whoppers to the birding community, I had never heard that term before), in addition to a bunch of other birds that I never knew existed. Some of my favorites were the redish egret and the caracara, but the nice thing was that he actually explained what you were looking for instead of saying 'there is a ---' and expecting that you knew what in the world he was talking about. The day was gorgeous and there is very little better than hanging out in the sun on a boat.

Lisa and I on the boat

one of the whooping cranes

We then headed back for our actual meetings (all good things eventually do have to end of course). That portion of the day was not quite as superb. The headache that was threatening to really become a headache got worse the longer the day went on, and that combined with conversations on external reviews, and annual work plans, and advisory committees can push most anyone over the edge. I made it through, however, and on the bus ride back to the hotel everyone sang me happy birthday which was very cute.

Then we were back out on a boat for an evening cruise and dinner. One boat ride in a day is impressive, so two was quite exciting. We made paper plate awards for everyone which was highly entertaining both to make and hand out. My one award was the Amelda Marcos award making fun of the fact I had all those shoes with me, and the other one was the 'To the Point' award - go figure, I'm not one for beating around the bush when commenting. We watched the sunset and then headed back to the dock, where a few of us walked back to the hotel rather than taking the bus again. One of our group members wanted to get ice cream so when we saw an little ice cream store with an 'open' sign we were quite excited. We were then very entertained to see a sign on the door that said 'Please call ---- if you want ice cream. I'm in the back cleaning the porch.' That is one ice cream store sign I've never seen, but once we figured out the area code we were on our way for an ice cream cone. I couldn't decide which flavor until I saw there was a birthday cake ice cream flavor and figured that was an obvious choice. It was a very good one as well - vanilla ice cream with chocolate cake, icing, and sprinkles.

our random ice cream store

me and my ice cream cone in front of one of the many large animals in Port Aransas - apparently they have a thing for them, I think this shark was my favorite though, you could walk in his mouth!

I closed out the day by laying in bed just happy to not have anything else planned. The week was a lot of fun, but it was jammed packed so moments when you were just laying in bed relaxing were nice. Overall, I would highly recommend a birthday spent with fun friends, whether it involves work or not. And you can hardly beat two boat trips in one day!