Birthday Blessings

Rockapella in Reno

Day 4

January 19, 2015

Travel Day

Happy Birthday from Google!

Well, he stayed until midnight.  Scott Leonard stayed up until 3:00 a.m. Eastern Time, his time, just to be with the PellaPosse and say Happy Birthday to me on my birthday.  ME!  OMG, what a wonderful way to start my birthday, with a hug from my favorite singer!  Thank you, CSL4!!!

Sigh.

We cleaned up our table, and walked to the East Tower (The tower! Rapunzel!) and I was beaming.  We passed the poster near the steakhouse, and I still pointed at it even though the man on the poster was walking with us.  Then when we got to the elevator, I told the Posse that there were 5 of us, and we needed to take a picture posing as Rockapella.  Scott gladly took our picture.  Then, I asked Scott to pose like himself.

That's the guy on the poster!

As we got off of the elevator on the 12th floor, a very strong waft of someone's very spicy weed floated over to us.  Whoa.  We told Scott, he stuck his head out of the elevator, and took one whiff, smiled, and told us, "Sleep well."  Bye, Scott!  Thank you!

Dodie needed to get away from the floor because the smoke was too strong, and she went out to play the slots a little bit more.  We each had a Birthday Cake flavored Oreo.  If I knew which room had the party people in it, I would have knocked on their door to offer the rest to them, because I'm sure they would have appreciated it.  I was still up when Dodie came back.  The events of the evening were still kind of far from hitting me.  I just knew that I was happy.

Sweet

After I woke up and took a shower, I noticed that there was a text message from Karla.  She and Jenn rode the hotel shuttle early in the morning, and who was on that shuttle but Jeff!  He said that the guys had been waiting for us last night (Scott's text did not go through because we were subterranean when he sent it).   I sent a message to Steve to apologize, and he eventually let me know that it was all good.  I don't know that the other guys would have stayed up to wait with the Posse like Scott did, especially because JT had an early flight, but who knows?  I think we made the right decision, because I didn't want to crash anyone's post-show bonding time.  Jenn was mortified, of course, because she was very tired when they saw Jeff and she's pretty sure that she was snoring on the shuttle.  Aw, that's OK, Jenn.  It's just part of your sleepy charm.

Wendy, Dodie and I went to Starbucks inside the hotel, but there was no Pella sighting.  Not that I would have been prepared for that, with the no-make-up and the traveling clothes I was wearing.  I played for a few minutes at the slots since my mom would tell me that I should have good luck on my birthday.  Not lucky on the slots for me, though.  Instead, I've got Pella Luck.  We got our stuff, checked out of the hotel, and said goodbye to the poster in the elevator.  It was Dodie's turn to drive, which is good because I don't think that they could have relied on my actually concentrating on the road for 2 hours.

We had a few hours to wait before our flights from Sacramento were scheduled to leave, so I worked on the blog and we had some lunch before saying goodbye to Dodie.  Wendy and I looked at the pictures on my camera while we were on our flight.  I have proof that it happened!

Beautiful sunset that matches the Southwest colors

 Cindy had organized a birthday dinner for me at Gyu-Kaku, a Japanese-style BBQ restaurant at Victoria Gardens where you pretty much cook your own food. (Thanks, Cindy!) I don't know why we pay other people so that we can cook our own food, but it was my idea and we had fun talking about the trip while trying not to burn ourselves.  Their macaron ice cream sandwiches were YUM.  I would probably go there in the future just to pick up one of those things when we're there for a Rockapella show or whatever else I see at the Lewis Family Playhouse.

Green tea ice cream macaron with Bananaman

So my actual birthday started with a Rockapella member, and ended with my posse.  Thank you, everyone, for making me feel so special.  This is a weekend that I hope I never forget, and it is all thanks to 5 beautiful and talented guys, an awesome sound man, and my wonderfully supportive and crazy-as-me PellaPosse.  I love you!

Thank you!