I do not celebrate 29 repeatedly and facetiously, I openly declare than I AM 48 YEARS OLD.

Birthdays.

Mine was on Monday March 17th - Greg and I got a hotel (with my employee discount, $29) near downtown St. Pete on Sunday night.  We walked around the waterfront, had lunch at a British pub called Moon Over Water.  They had a St. Patrick's day special: Guinness and steak pie.  It had a thick yummy dark gravy with mushrooms, steak, carrots and onions and it was topped with a giant flaky puff pastry. It makes me hungry right now just to remember it.

On Monday we went to the Dali museum to see the Dali master works and their current Andy Warhol exhibit.  It was wonderful, as experiencing great artwork always is, but the museum was uncomfortably crowded and the galleries are already fairly small.  This is the new Dali museum, the old one was not as architecturally impressive but it had much better spaces to appreciate Dali's paintings from a distance as well as up close.

We also went shopping at used bookstores, vinyl record stores and movie shops, as we are wont to do.  It was a little two day/one night birthday vacation, but it was very nice.

Next week we head out of town to Cleveland for Greg's birthday.  He will be 40 on April 5, and this coincides wonderfully with the best cult/grindhouse/exploitation/horror convention: Cinema Wasteland.  We will be meeting some of Greg's friends and fellow movie experts from all over the country and Canada, all flying in for the convention and for Greg's birthday celebration.

We went to Cinema Wasteland once before.  We booked it months in advance when things were going good, then my father passed away and Greg lost his job and we had no money and were stressed and grieving.  We went anyway, having already paid hundreds for the non-refundable trip, and honestly we had more fun than you'd think.  This trip, however, will be wonderful.