A Wedding Awaits - For Better or Worse

(Written on 12/12/2008)

It’s my birthday and I’m sitting at Gate D2 waiting for my tin-can to roll in. If the plane goes down, I’ll have lived exactly 26 years – well, probably not to the minute.

My mother didn’t think that was funny. My sister made fun of me for trying to be profound. It would make one local news reporter very happy – front-page, sob-story material.

Airports aren’t so bad; this has to be the most relaxed one I’ve ever been in. All the restaurants serve red beans and rice and Jambalaya, although they’re a sad and expensive reproduction of what you get when you take a taxi 20 minutes south into the Big Easy proper.

Last year on my birthday I think I worked and then went out to a local wine bar with family, friends, and my then-new, brash, Australian housemate (when I still liked her).

After I went to my boxing teacher’s house and watched a match as his girlfriend glared a hole into the front of my head.

This year I took a morning jog down Elysian Fields, which turned into aerobics as I tried to dodge my way around all the dog shit on the ground, I took a $35 taxi ride to the airport (my taxi driver told me that you could take the highway that we were on all the way to Los Angeles), and I paid $12 for a salad which annoyed me more than it should have.

Not bad so far. I’ve come a long way in a year.

More from my taxi driver: If you put salt in your beer during these choking summers that everyone keeps warning me about, you’ll sweat your beer out faster and you won’t be as dehydrated. Plus, it allegedly makes the beer taste better. He wondered what I’ll drink this weekend in Vermont to stay warm. I do too.