Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Phew. It's been a long one and with school right around the corner, we must use up all our summer time to maximize the efficiency of our remaining summer hours. Not to mention it was my birthday this week, so with two birthday celebrations and every other evening booked, we spent most of this week outside of our apartment.

We try to see our local friends as much as we can, but that turns out to be an infrequent event at best. Still, we managed to do dinner with Erika this past Monday evening and then stopped by the Rock's house to tend their little tyke while they went out for some anniversary fun. Tending kids: just as easy as I remembered it [especially when they sleep almost the whole time].

While I had great plans to get out of the church BBQ tuesday evening, those plans got bumped to Wednesday. We arrived at the park 30 minutes to an hour early and that is explained by pregnancy mind melds [or, too much faith in the accuracy of the ward website's calendar, because who can remember what time they announced in Church?]. But after cooking our food and munching on some delicious chili and pilaf someone brought, we were satisfied and came home. Because it was a more intimate group this time, the food people brought was much higher quality [lots of people were on summer vacation, we think].

Wednesday, I finally saw The Planet of the Apes. The CADRE graduates sometimes put on a movie night and I had been thinking about Planet for some time now, so Thomas and I invited everyone along for the ride. I can't imagine what it must have been like to see this film when it first debuted in 1968, because the film has spawned so many cultural memes. This was the principal reason I wanted to see the movie - because it is invested in our cultural consciousness.

We finished off our $150 birthing class. You would think that it would be the Rolls Royce of birthing classes with that price tag, but they charge that much because there is no other way to get a tour of the hospital. It's an exploitation of the masses. They do the tour last, because it is the part everyone is waiting for. And it wasn't nearly as exciting as I'm sure the price tag makes you think it would be. Highlight of the evening: the lady who kept asking questions about security measures to prevent babies from being stolen. Hyperparanoid? I think so.

And finally, we come to the birthday. And Rebecca had plans. We got up Friday morning, made a nice breakfast and Rebecca told me about her crazy dream where she was playing hookey from work and I had papers to write for school. Then she told me she really was playing hookey! We had a full day of events planned. FREE events. Rebecca wanted to prove that on your birthday, you still can get free things, so we did free things all day long.

First was the Jelly Belly factory where we took a free tour and got free samples. Because we went during a weekday, we were able to see the live process of jellybeans being made. Afterwards, we stopped by the gift shop where they gave out any free sample of any flavor you wanted to try. I did try jalapeno.

From Jelly Belly, we drove to Red Robin for lunch where I could get a free hamburger. But after we told the waitress it was my birthday, she gave us free fries and free drinks and free dessert, most of which we didn't eat [so much fooood!]. We wanted to spread out the free love to many different places.

But apparently, Dairy Queen wasn't meant to be one of those places. There is only one dairy queen in the South Bay area, so Rebecca had intended us to use the free Blizzard coupon while we were up in Fairfield. However, Dairy Queens go out of business right and left out there and there was no Dairy Queen to be found. And it was hot out. So we wanted to get back to the Bay as quick as we could.

30 minutes later, we were enjoying the perfect weather in San Francisco, particularly in the Golden Gate Park. After spending a few hours in the de Young museum, we got to the Japanese Tea Gardens a few minutes before they were going to close. At $4 a person, that didn't seem worth it, so instead we opened presents alongside the lake. An interesting comparison: while Central Park is truly a magnificent park, no matter where I have been in the park, I still can tell I'm in the city. It looms over the park. In Golden Gate Park, you really do forget you're in the city.

Traffic was perfect on our way home 280, another free thing on my birthday. After renting a free movie from Hollywood Video, we got a free dinner and dessert at Bennigan's, but we skipped the free ice cream at Cold Stone and saved it for a rainy day. Not a bad day. Not bad at all.

There is a recent CADRE alum who has a birthday the same week as me (i.e. the same year as me so we could share the same candles), so we had a BBQ/Wii party at his place Saturday evening. We spent all morning baking cakes and decorating our wonderful dragon cake. And after several hours of playing Wii sports and Wario Ware: Smooth Moves, we called it a (late) night and came home. What a wonderful week.