Crit Appreciation Day

As I sit here luxuriating in the glorious splendor that is having a Monday off of work watching vintage horror (Fright Night) I can't help but feel thankful for the FANTASTIC birthday I just celebrated with people I love and always seem to have tons of fun with. Sure, I'm hungover, STILL (even though I haven't had a drink since the wee hours of Sunday morning) and look like someone who's been rode hard and put away wet, I spent WAY too much money shopping, traveling a bit and drinking copious amounts of alcohol with some pretty tasty food tossed in for good measure. However, I leave the weekend with a mind full of wonderful (and a few hazy) memories, mementos and photographs.

On my actual birthday, The Hubs and I decided to make a little trip up to Newport, KY to visit the aquarium. Even though they didn't have their own Aqua Man swimming about distributing his own form of watery justice, they did have a pretty nifty jelly fish display

and a GYNORMOUS alligator snapping turtle that could easily smash a persons face in one bite. I found this last fact fascinating. We spent some time ogling at the only jaws-esque shark in the place and concluded our excursion by meandering about the shops outside of the aquarium, which, much to the Hubster's everlasting joy, included a candy shop.




We opted to try out a new Mediterranean restaurant for dinner that night,Petra's, a cuisine we normally love, but were let down by appetizers still frozen in the middle and shasherma's with loads of fat on the meat *insert gag*. Needless to say, we were not members of the clean plate club that evening.
Later in the night a friend accompanied us to watch the newest installment of the Harry Potter movies at a local Movie Tavern. There is no greater invention than a movie theater and a tavern combined. We ordered a drink titled "The Big Blue Thing Margarita for 2" and slurped our way through what I considered to be one the best Harry Potter movies to date (yes, I've seen, and loved, them all). The only downside to the night was losing a penguin necklace that KC had given me only 5 hours earlier for my birthday. I had been lusting after that thing for months, only to recieve it as a gift and lose it to some theater cleaning person who probably gave it to some slutty 15 year old. GAAAHHHH. Still burns my biscuit.
Friday I spent the night watching True Blood with a friend and co-worker who I have recruited into not only watching the series but also reading the novels. We drank two bottles of wine that night and ended up talking about everything from annoying co-worker to Rush Limbaugh. I can honestly say she is the ONLY friend I have that actually likes the latter. I forgive her because of her keen sense in wine selection and her rapier wit.
Saturday was titled "Crit Appreciation Day" by my friend Paul, pictured here...



He's giving the thumbs down as the third gospel song was sang during karaoke at THE BAR!


This was the day I spent with my friends celebrating that I had survived another year relatively unscathed and only slightly more jaded that the previous year (of course I reached the height of cynicism at the early age of 8). We began the evening dining at my favorite pizza joint, Old Chicago Pizza. We waited an hour to be seated since there were 12 of us only to be separated into separate booths. Lame. We spent the evening shouting back and forth over shoulders and such and passing plates of pizza and appetizers. After we had enough of that, we opted to visit the Collins Eastland Bowling Lane for karaoke night. I had always wanted to sing karaoke but had either been too intoxicated or too sober to sing. Evidently, 9 Bud Lights=1 Critty drunk enough


to sing to a room of rowdy rednecks singing such inspirational numbers as "Go Tell It On The Mountain", "The Heart Don't Lie", various Conway Twitty songs and even Enrique Iglesias. I convinced KC to accompany me and we shook up the place, and made our karaoke debut with Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell" and followed it up a little later with MJ's "Billie Jean". We had some trouble out of an older, fatter douchebag Charlie Daniel's look alike slamming our "Billie Jean" performance which he titled "the stupidest thing he had ever seen until he saw our friend taping it and then decided that was the stupidest thing he had ever seen." I have a major qualm with people who take karaoke seriously. I promptly told him I thought he was a pathetic asshole who shouldn't confuse a bowling ally bar with the American Idol showroom and that perhaps he should wait for his ship to sail elsewhere. He did and we were left to sing off key and white people dance in peace and boy did we. Paul ended up singing the theme song to Cheers, Roy sang "Brickhouse" with KC as a back up dancer and there was a group rendition of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'".


So.
I'm back ya'll. I'll be checking out everyone's bloggings since I've been on hiatus throughout the night tonight.