And then:

So, my birthday.

I’m going to have to say that 25 Part II is already my best year yet, and the birthday itself definitely set the tone. It began with the Flaming Lips singing in my ear and ended with me belting out “Me and Bobby McGee” to forty of my dearest friends, many of whom I had just met that night. (Moniqua, call me, girl! Vaguely Mediterranean middle-aged man who bought me shots while I did karaoke, let’s get lunch!)

Some highlights include:

• Being the belle of Brian’s tattoo.
• Laser Tag with Brian, Steve, and my brother. My brother and I chose code names in honor of our beloved No Shirt Cousins, so I was Travis and he was Cason, only the Laser Tag guy accidentally entered it as “Tason,” which is now my brother’s new nickname until death.
• Steve was wearing the most awesome shirt that simply and inexplicably read KURT LODER, which was naturally his Laser Tag code name, and it made the points-reading ceremony at the end that much better: “White Cheetah, 100. Nightmare, 95. Slayer, 70. Nitro, 65. Kurt Loder, 50.”
• Being cornered in the Laser Tag maze by two little 13 year old boys who just kept shooting me, waiting for my sensors to reactivate, and then shooting me again, and then ambushing them later with my colleagues Tason and Kurt Loder, while they yelled in cracking voices, “Hey, you can’t do that! We took an OATH!”
• HAMSTERS ALL KINDS.
• Big Daddy, which was really just kind of a letdown. Perhaps if the two could have been combined somehow, it would be another story.
• Dinner with my family, where my dad told the same story he tells on every one of my birthdays, which always ends with “… and you were born with eyes like chrome, like the color of a bumper on a ‘57 Buick.” Then, like every year, he launched into “The Streets of Laredo,” the first song he ever sang to me.
• The best fortune cookie fortune I have ever received.
• Karaoke at Lennie’s. Lennie’s is located inside a hotel and everything inside is covered with either mirrors or red leather, so you know it’s good.
• I pledged to be drunk enough to sing both the Elton John and Kiki Dee parts of “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart.” They didn’t have it on the list, but I kept up my end of the deal anyway.
• Evidently Brian has been hiding his flawless rendition of “Folsom Prison Blues” from us for all these years. It was just unreal.
• Steve and I going straight into “Where Did Our Love Go?” after our “Tainted Love” duet, despite the fact that the song was over and there was no music to back it up.
• All the shots from strangers at the bar, including the one handed to me while Erin and I were in the middle of “You’re So Vain,” which I downed without dropping my microphone or missing a word.
• The mail-order bride bartender ordering everyone’s ass on the dance floor during her Britney Spears cover.
• The DJ calling out “Erin, Kelly and Sarah?” but Erin and Kelly had already left, so without a word, Jon and Steve went right up there with me and sang “Leader of the Pack.” Jon used this time with the microphone to hit on the lucky ladies seated at the bar, but Steve made the motorcycle noises like a trooper.
• Slow dancing like it was 1989.
• There was a conga line. I think. I was pretty drunk by that point, so I might need confirmation on that one.
• Steve and I finally making our exit at 2 am to “Sexy Motherfucker” while everyone left in the bar yelled goodnight, using our first names.
• Being driven home in the pouring rain with one last duet to Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer.”
• You know, there’s just nothing like waking up still wearing your heels.

Yeah, I know, bulletpoints again. Mama’s still a little hungover and she needs to recuperate in time for her coed slumber party this weekend, so be a peach and humor her.