birth(day), the week / the season

aah, fantastic!
29 rules so far.

haven't been on too much due to the celebratin'- so apologies, friends and fam. but thanks to many of you for making it the B.

what a great time. this birthDAY has simply turned into birthMonth, and i'll take it. i got lucky to go home and see my fam the week before, for the fourth-ish. for some reason, i feel like if i don't see them around then, it won't actually be my birthday. i could be wrong, but i don't think that it's ever happened. i love that even living here, i get that gift every year.

so really, the b-day was last saturday, the 9th. 29, y'all! now, don't get me wrong. i am youngy-jones, so this ain't no big deal, but i think that number freaked me out bad prior to turning it. it's such a cliche of the last young year of your life, especially for ladies. all i can think of is oil of olay ads, or shoebox cards with that old lady Maxine on them from Hallmark. is this what's left? of course not, but i dare you to stop psyching me out, america.

what a fantastic bunch of weeks. my actual birthday was spent pretty much as every saturday is - i taught at CSz in the morning, had a show at ImprovOlympic at 8, then had another show at CSz at 10:30 pm. even though this sounds kind of typical and uncelebratory, it was awesome. every few minutes of the day, there was a call from someone singing to me. my students in class were fun, and overly committed to the day's work and play. my IO show later began with basic pandering for applause regarding said birth, and continued into a great, playful show with my team, Merman. CSz, at 10:30 was hijinks galore - surrounded by great friends, and even surprised with a bouquet of roses at the end of the show during chariots of fire from zach thompson. hilarious.

my friends and fam are about the best thing out there. if you're one of them, high-five yourself, because i think you've aced it on the friendship front. i don't know how one person can continue to be so lucky throughout life finding such great people, but count me as one of the lucky.

speaking of, on the tenth, my roommates and i went to dinner to celebrate. this was super fun, largely in part because my long-lost SC ship-roommate was back for the week. it ruled. these girls, beth and megan, are just tops. we went and got tapas, which led to a lot of sangria-draaankin', which led to sort-of debauchery. just enough debauchery to make me feel alive, just restrained enough to make me feel grown up.

tons of good times in-between then and now; including some rehearsals with celebrations after, some great shows, some bar-hanging, some mega-touch playin', some plain-hangin', some coffee-datin' catch ups, some show watchin', some heart to hearts. it was nice.

but the piece de resistance was last night. me and b-fri joey b. planned a giant clue-chase around the city. even though many of our friends are improvisers and performers and have weirdo schedules, tons of people came and played. planning this thing was insane at first - we couldn't figure out a way to make everything work right, so that people wouldn't end up in a pile or cheat. finally we worked out a great system, where we planted about 20 clues around town, with limericks or riddles on a ditto we handed out in the beginning. every time you found a clue, it would have a random number on it, and you had to add all the numbers up to win. joey and i got to plant the clues yesterday afternoon, sneaking around hiding things under wrigley field ticket windows, in newspaper machines, in mailboxes. it was super fun. one of the clues that satisfied me most was the following:

"She lived in a van in Alaska, she’s a singer
You’ll also find her on your ring finger.
July 17th is today’s date;
Keep up the good work – You’re doing grrrrRRREAT!"

This clue, to Chicagoans, should lead you to a local grocery chain called Jewel. When you got there, you had to find Frosted Flakes, where we had hidden a code underneath.

A. This clue was hilarious to plant, as were others, because we felt the sting of surveillance, and/or as if we were breaking the law, and
B. This clue made me feel like I was the mastermind behind Supermarket Sweep.

the ending of the clue chase was everything we hoped, because three of our eight teams were neck to neck on winning. one team - team lawyer, i'll call them - were bounding ahead, using their lawyery prowess to leap beyond many with splitting up tactics and great deduction. however, because of one simple misprint on one of the numbers they wrote down, they had the wrong code to find the last place where joey and i were. instead, another crew of william and mary-ers, all of who had stuck together and walked it in the bounds of friendship and camraderie, called in with the correct code as team law ran for it, and won the whole thing.

i think we all learned a little something here today.
{the more you knowwwwwww}

anyway, at the end, several of our friends who we hadn't yet celebrated with came and joined and those clue-chasers found the end locale of a laundry bar where joey and i had been the whole time. it was just great, just enough for a sunday evening with 50 random folks gathered together. really nice.

the best!

in conclusion - thanks so much for a great birf'monf'. this entry is mostly for me, so i can look back and remember how great so many different wings of folks in my life are. you rule.

happy birthday, all.