The Colonel's 25th

Hey kids.

A Black Bean Brownie Cake Mom dropped off in the morning.

Yours Truly turned 25 today. A monumental milestone, really, watered down slightly by the fact it fell on, you know, a weekday this year.  Not a whole heck of a lot you can do on a weekday as far as birthdays are concerned, but I count myself fortunate that I'm one of those lucky assholes that never has to go to work on my birthday.

One of the perks about being a teacher and having a birthday in July. Kinda rules.

Kris asked what I wanted to do on my birthday this year - if I had anything special in mind, if I wanted to go out to dinner, etc. - but I'm low-maintenance anymore, and honestly my 'dream day' is pretty basic: all I wanted to do was head to Radio Wasteland later on in the morning and shop for some vinyl, then spend the afternoon cleaning, resleeving, and cataloging my ever-expanding collection. You know, total nerd shit. 

I've spent far crappier days, I can tell you that much.

A couple days later - when it was the weekend and we didn't have any huge plans in the calendar (for once) - some of my friends took me around downtown Midland on a bar crawl for a belated celebration of my 25 years on this planet. Good times as always.

So here you go, folks - my 25th Birthday in a nutshell.  Enjoy.

My favorite thing to do on any birthday is hit up Midland's local record store, Radio Wasteland (where I'm considered a regular, and am additionally a 'Top Fan' of theirs on Facebook.)

My shelving situation is definitely getting dicey at home - I'm running out of space for additional records, so I don't buy in bulk as much as I used to, and my 'want' list is probably around 15-20 records. Still, I do enjoy the treasure hunting aspect of walking into a record store and stumbling across LPs I didn't realize I wanted. I probably spent 90 minutes in Jim's store today, thoroughly canvassing the entirety of his wares.

Walked out with seven boxed sets of classical music and operas, a 2-LP compilation, double-LPs from Brubeck and Chicago, Pablo Cruise, Loggins and Messina, and - the jewel of my finds today - the second compilation from Fat Wreck Chords, Survival of the Fattest (one of my first punk CDs I ever bought, back in my sophomore year of high school.) All for $44.

An awesome birthday haul, if I do say so myself.

Once I got home, I broke out the ol' Spin Clean machine and set to work cleaning, cataloging, and sleeving my new albums. I had ordered some new inner and outer sleeves in preparation for this undertaking days before, and made sure they were shipped to my house in time for my birthday. Once the new additions were all taken care of, I began resleeving a bunch of my existing albums that needed an upgrade. Took about five or six hours, but it was an awesome five or six hours, I'll tell ya what.

And some jalapeno honey whiskey accompanied the undertaking quite nicely.

A couple days later, me and some of the dads from our Midland friend group headed over to the Larkin Beer Garden to kick off an evening of bar-hopping downtown.

The beer selection on hand was minimal, but decent. Morgan, Mitch and Erik were on hand this evening (Collier was unfortunately out of town this weekend), and while we were at the beer truck we bumped into my old realtor, Rick, who helped us in buying our home back in 2017. Coincidentally, Rick - an avid record collector himself - was wearing a Radio Wasteland t-shirt.

We stayed for a single beer, then decided we'd head somewhere else to mix it up (there weren't a ton of people there, and there was zero shad to speak of since, you know, it's in the middle of an empty parking lot and everything.)

What are you, a cop?

Not gonna lie, this sign is pretty accurate.

Murals are starting to spread throughout the city, which grows more and more hipsterly with every passing year.

Heading downtown towards The Commons, where you're allowed to drink outside downtown (within the marked barricades, obviously.)

After picking up some beers from Molasses - a barbecue joint on the main drag - we set up shop at a table outside me and Erik's Lodge (the third story of the Larkin Building, in the background there.)

There was a quartet of saxophonists doing covers this evening. I forget what they're called, but I like to think their name is Sax on the Beach. That'd be the name of my sax quartet if I had one.

After a couple beers on Main Street, we decided to grab some food at nearby Whichcraft - probably my favorite bar downtown.

This place has the best beer selection in Midland, bar none.

Kicking things off with an imperial sour from Transient (never heard of 'em.)

Snackables.

Once we had eaten some food and had a few drinks at Whichcraft, the guys were really jonesing for some Old Fashioneds, so we headed over to Three Bridges, back on Main St.

This place distills their own liquor, so Erik and I checked out their vats for a hot minute.

Morgan, Mitch, and a weird-looking plant at our table that sorta looked like hops.

This bozo was providing live music to the bar patrons throughout the duration of our stay there. He was not good.

En route to the next stop. . .

Obligatory group pic under these lights.

We stopped off at Decker's for a nightcap (a few pitchers of cheap, domestic beer that went down like water.) When I got there I realized it was filled with my brother Chris' old high school buddies: the dude bartending was his friend, Jess, who used to be the singer in Chris' high school and college bands.

A regular at Decker's is one of Chris' oldest friends (from like elementary school), Sverchek.

Sverchek belts out some classic '90s alternative for the night's karaoke session. . .

Erik picked up the tab at Decker's and, on our way out, noticed how Jess the bartender kept track of our ordering.

Morgan gifted me this for a birthday present - one of my all-time favorite Irish whiskeys. Perfect way to end a stellar birthday - hoping next year pans out just as awesome.

- Brian