The GGA Project -- Day #160 "On Celebrating"

Damn!  Juuuuuust missed the cut-off time again...

Everybody likes birthdays, right?  Ok, of course not everybody does.  A lot of people seem to dread them, and I’ve definitely had a couple of sad-ish birthdays in my day. But by and large I like birthdays and I think most people do in varying degrees.

Some, like my Dad, love making big deals about their special days.  He will gladly tell everybody it’s his birthday, and if we go to a restaurant to celebrate he not only doesn’t mind being sung to by the servers (which I think a lot of people find at least somewhat mortifying), he'd probably be a little bummed if we didn't make sure it happened.

Then there are people who keep their birthdays a complete secret…they lie about it even.  They  either hate getting older or just hate the attention and would like best the chance to let the entire day slip silently by without anybody raising so much as an eyebrow, let alone a glass in celebration.

I fall somewhere in the middle.  While I certainly don’t dread birthdays (I actually like my age, don’t mind adding another year at all—not that it’d matter if I did), I also don’t usually draw attention to them either.  I don’t ask for the day off work or plan parties in my own honor.  And the thought of being sung to in the middle of a restaurant is pretty frightening.

But this year I felt somewhat different about my birthday.  I recognize that the past few years I’ve been on a steady path in an effort to deny who I was, or THAT I was.   Sometimes I can be kind of down with concept of denying one’s self.  As Buddhists would say, the insistence on false recognition of a "self" only leads to desire, which is certain to lead to suffering.  I think that’s true to some extent.

But I’m not a Buddhist.  And I see that the years I’ve spent denying who I was as I’d always known myself to be have led to suffering anyway.  I remember having a conversation with my Aunt on the phone last summer in which I told her I thought that if I got any smaller (figuratively, of course) I would just disappear.

So this year I felt like acknowledging my birthday and allowing room for the idea of simply celebrating me...and just because I managed to live another year.  I love celebrating other people’s birthdays.  Why not allow myself the same kind of yay?

Today's New Activity: Birthday Party, Mine

So I did have a party for my 25th birthday, but that was only because I happened to graduate from college that same day--and I guess I could say that I was in a similar state of mind in that moment, 8 years ago now.  I was contemplative but very very hopeful, proud of my accomplishment and absolutely sure that a beautiful life lie ahead of me.  Maybe you sort of have to be in that state of mind to throw yourself a party.

A couple of weeks ago I invited some friends to join me at The Saddlerack, a club I was first introduced to by my friends Denise and Christine just a few months back.  I knew it was kind of a gamble to choose that location since it's a good drive from where most of my friends live, plus there's a pretty steep cover charge, but there's a lot about the club I really liked, so I went for it.

The thing is, the weeks leading up to tonight were kind of stressful at times.  I would think about it and start worrying--what if nobody comes?  What if people come and nobody has fun?  And in past few days and even today itself a few people did let me know they wouldn't be able to make it, even though they'd originally said they could.  They had legitimate reasons, but I started to feel all kinds of self-conscious, wondering if there'd be anybody left to celebrate with.  By early yesterday morning I was almost, quite literally, in a cold sweat worrying about this shindig.  And I was very close to calling the whole thing off.

Wow.

But there's was a part of me that new that was exactly the wrong thing to do at this point in my life.  It was exactly like the recent version of me--whom I didn't like much at all--to wanna shrink away and send out a loud (albeit unspoken) apology for just, I don't know, the simple act of having an expectation, a concept with so very many facets and incarnations.

I talked myself down off the wimpy ledge with this obvious thought: it will be wonderful and it will be fun, whoever decides to show up.

And, of course, it was.

I have never danced so much on my birthday (which is technically a few days from now) or been so completely sure that I was exactly where I was supposed to be at a given moment in time.  Or maybe, to be more clear, I have had that feeling before--but it was a spontaneous feeling, not one sprung from a sense of relief, as this one was.  I had a truly wonderful time and was grateful for the show of love.  And I resolve to never stress over a happy event like this again.

And for the record, I think there should be a mechanical bull at ALL birthdays from now until the end of time, even though I'm way too scared of being paralyzed to venture onto one myself   :)

The GGA Project -- Day #62 "Electric Achy Breaky"

Tonight I found myself at The Saddle Rack again.  Forget the fact that it's supposedly a country bar.  It's the only club of any substantial size that has a dance floor and that I don't have to drive 40 minutes to get to.  That's something for a woman who likes to get out and dance now and then.


I'd met my friend Jenn for dinner beforehand, and then we boot scooted our way over to the honky tonk.  Sorry, I don't have many tools in my country talk toolbox, so work with me.


The club was kind of a dud tonight, mainly because there just weren't enough people there.  There's no better vibe kill than a warehouse-sized nightspot that's only 1/3 full.  To be there, you feel kind of like a loser....one of only a handful of people with that dumb idea for the night.


Regardless, we were already there so we wanted to make the best of it.  At one point an impromptu line dance group formed out on the dance floor, and within moments everyone who was not prepared to do that line dance immediately escaped.


Jenn and I watched for a little while, and then she said, "Go ahead on out there.  I want to watch you make a fool of yourself."


"Me?" I said, "Why don't you go?!"


Only one solution.


Today's New Activity: Country Bar Line Dancing


On the far left of the dance floor was a fully outfitted cowgirl who seemed to be leading the pack.  To the right of her were nearly equally skilled dancers who knew all the moves, just not how to do them quite so smoothly (or in Daisy Dukes).  The middle of the pack was populated with people who mostly knew what they were doing, but who occasionally tripped up.  Off to the right were the beginners, who were busy watching the others for their cues, and as a result got completely tripped up every time a turn happened and they could no longer see the leaders.


Off to the far, far right--and fittingly so-- were Jenn and I.  This section was reserved for the handicapped and their service animals, the stumbling drunk, and those just too complacent to bother learning the dance in earnest, which is where we came into the whole thing.


Here's the thing about line dancing--the reason I just can't find the energy to care: I don't get what the payoff is.  I mean, even if you manage to master all the moves, how is that fun?  Now you are just one in a big military-like formation doing all the same moves at the same time.  I mean, maybe it's the appeal of doing something right, or the camaraderie of doing something as a group that appeals to people, but I'm just not feeling it.


The thing is, have you ever seen somebody line dancing who looks like they're having fun?  I don't believe I've ever seen a line dancer smiling.  They actually look kind of stressed out, like it would just be the most mortifying thing ever if they were to mess up.  Good thing Jenn and I got over THAT!  I don't think we got a single move right.  Eventually we stopped trying and just kind of shimmied around a bit, laughing at ourselves, which was fun enough.


I'll definitely be back to The Saddle Rack, just not maybe all that soon.  A $15 cover charge is way steep for a hit-or-miss scene.  But it's always good to succeed at dragging out my gal Jenn, who can sometimes forget she's not actually a 78-year-old shut-in.  :P

The GGA Project -- Day #27 "Three for One"

Good day for the new, apparently.

Today's (1st) New Activity: Lunch at Chutney

I love Indian/Pakistani food.  But due to some very, very strong associations I was heretofore not ready to deal with, I have been away from one of my favorite cuisines for some 6 months now!  Today, however, I was finally able to take that little jump and go in for the spice.  I chose a restaurant in Fremont that one of my coworkers is always raving about.

Chutney had a pretty ridiculously large menu, which sometimes make me leery.  How can a place do that many items well?  It doesn't really matter that they do them ALL well, though--just that they do whatever I ordered well.  Which they did.

First of all, there's nothing like a tub of fresh onion and tomato food accessories to welcome you in.  I love this about the Indian/Pakistani restaurants in Fremont: they have all sorts of self-serve fixins for patrons to just go to town on:

Isn't that beautiful?  Anyway, the Karahi Paneer special (Indian cheese in spicy masala with red bell peppers and serrano chilis) was great.  Sitting there, I couldn't help but feel sorry for all the non-spicy food that's been sustaining me while I waited out my Indo/Pak food association woes.  How sad and unworthy that food must have felt.  It's like the friend the wingman targets, who's just there to ensure things don't get too fun or interesting.

Yummmmmmmmyyyy...

Indian and Pakistani people will tell you it's practically sacrilegious (for Hindus, Muslims, Christians, etc, alike) to eat BOTH rice and naan with your meal.  I will tell you they don't know what they're missing.


I'll be back to Chutney for sure.


Moving right along....


Today's the birthday of my best gal, Kelsi.  She wanted to go check out a band playing at a wine bar in Willow Glen.  Sooooo...




Today's (2nd) New Activity: A Visit to Grapevine Wine Bar


Grapevine wine bar, Grapevine wine bar.  Say it 10 times, fast.


Kelsi's dad Doug is in town for a visit, and it was great to go out with the two of them and Kelsi's husband Jeff, because all my memories of Doug's visits involve music.  There was the time we karaoke'd at 7 Bamboo, the time we went to hear a friend's band at Gordon Biersch, and the time we were visiting Doug out in Arizona and had the *best fun* at a dueling piano bar in Tempe.


Tonight Kelsi thought we were in for some mellow jazz or something (I mean, you know...wine bar and all), but we were surprised to walk in and hear a Dave Matthews Band cover.  This was great news for me, as I've been groovin' on old DMB tunes a lot lately, especially digging this song:

And this one:

The band, a little trio with guitar, bass, and drums, was pretty good, and we all got the chance to catch up as well.  Nice little birthday outing.  All three of them had been up since very early with the young kids in Kelsi's house, so they made and early night of it.  That was all good, because I'd made tentative plans to round out the full day with


Today's (3rd) New Activity:  Dancing at The Saddle Rack


The Saddle Rack, as you may have guessed, is a country western bar.


Except that it seems it's not that at all.  I decided to join my former coworkers, Denise and Christine, in checking this place out when I saw their post about going, via Facebook earlier in the night. I'd been wanting to visit The Saddle Rack for years, but I fully expected it to be a foray into a whiskey and line-dancing world of boots and belt buckles, and Wrangler jeans with the tobacco can-imprinted rear pockets.


It was only partially that.


First of all, it is just shocking to me that this place even exists, especially in the East Bay, an area of Northern California that, by demographic reputation, you would least expect to find cowboys in.  And its location makes it seem as though it was meant to be kept a secret.  Maybe the East Bay's downlow cowboys had hoped to keep the place under wraps.  To get there, you take a turn off a pretty major street onto a small industrial sidestreet.  Then you keep driving way further than you think you should, late at night.  Keep going.....keep going...And then, out of nowhere, there appears a huge parking lot with football stadium-like lighting and spaces large enough to accommodate gigantic pickups, toolboxes, gun racks and all.


The place was immense.  I think that when I first walked in, I might have heard a country song.  Maybe two.  But the rest of the night was soundtracked by a great, female-vocalisted cover band that performed everything from Katy Perry to Def Leppard to The New Kids on the Block, and my personal favorite: A Billie Jean/Whoomp! There It Is mashup.  Oh, they did sing Friends in Low Places (inviting about 50 people on stage to sing along), but that's so mainstream I hardly even think of it as country.  And not that there's anything wrong with country.  I just don't feel particularly inclined to dance to it.


Anyway, one thing I really liked about this club was that there was so much entertainment beyond the band and dance floor.  There was a mechanical bull, of course.  I cannot BELIEVE how quickly people get whipped off that thing and get right back up and walk away.  Of course, there's probably a lot of bravado behind that (who knows what they feel like the next morning?).  So that was fun to watch.


Then there was this little nook where people laid back in an old barber's chair while a woman just basically poured shots into their mouths for as many seconds as they could handle.  Well, that wasn't so entertaining, just different.


There was a cage for dancing in (definitely not something I expected to find in a country bar), and an area seemingly reserved especially for line dancing (which, by the way, I really just don't understand.  I mean, even if you manage to master and perfect a line dance, what is the point?  People who are line dancing never look like they're having fun.  They look like they're just relieved to be doing the moves right).


There was a huge adjoining room with pool tables, and something I now believe should be in EVERY club: a snack bar!  They sold hot dogs and popcorn and yes(!) nachos with jalapeños.  Brilliant.


Though I was having a great time, I felt the urge to leave relatively early just because the baby's been teething and waking in the night.  I wanted to get home before he did so.  Still, I stuck around long enough for the band to turn the reigns over to a DJ who brought back some awesome Latin dancing memories for me with her first spin:

She followed that with a Michael Jackson "The Way You Make me Feel" partial sing-along, and then moved along with a little Cotton-Eyed Joe:

That song is so fun to dance to.  I figured that was a good way to close out the night, and left on that  high note :)


I'm glad I finally made it to The Saddle Rack.  I was a little skeptical when I thought it would be all about the line dancing, but it turned out to be just full of people who wanted to get their groove on in all sorts of ways.  It was the release I've kinda been searching for for a few weeks now, and how great to know this place exists so close to where I live.


Consider yourselves officially on notice, all you local readers: I WILL drag you all there eventually!