Happy Birthday Robert

Today is one of my best buds birthdays, Robert. He had to work but I made plans to take him out to dinner and then a surprise afterwards.

I started by going to Party City to get a bunch of balloons as I wanted to surprise him. Got the 12 balloons and 1 mylar balloon that said Happy Birthday. Soon as I get in my jeep one of the balloon pops, I try and secure them better so they won't hit anything. This means not rolling down the window on a hot day as the breeze would move them around. I proceed down to Robert's place, he lives a little over an hour away from me. On my way down I hear one pop, another pop and several more pops. By the time I made it to his house there were only 3 left plus the Mylar balloon which was already losing air. I was not a happy camper. I wanted to make this birthday awesome so I drove around Robert's apartment area looking for a balloon or flower shop to buy more. Found a place close by his house and in the middle of rush hour traffic made my way there. Parked got out and went up to the storefront and noticed that it was closed and being remodeled. So I got back in my jeep and back into traffic to locate another shop. This time I found a flower shop and it looked to be open.. so I find parking (which was difficult) and walk a few blocks to this shop and when I get there it's about 6:10pm and guess what they closed at 6pm. I went back to my jeep and tried to find another Party City and there was one only a mile away. While a mile in rush hour traffic takes forever but I finally get to where my GPS was taking me and it was in the middle of century city business district... and guess what.. no Party City. By now I'm super frustrated, I'm hot, my arm is killing me because I'm trying to hold the remaining unpopped balloons. I try one more flower show when I get a message from Robert letting me know he was home (he was running late because of a meeting). At that moment I said screw it. I would rather spend more time with him on his birthday then drive around trying to find a place to buy more balloons. So I made it back to his place in about 15 minutes and went up to his door, knocked and entered with my birthday gifts and my now 1/3rd bouquet of balloons. He was still surprise and seeing his smile made all my stress go away.

We sat down for a minute and he opened the two gifts I got for him. One was a gift card to Amazon as I know he wanted to buy several things and the other one was a personal gift. I noticed when I visited his place last week that he had no personal pictures on the wall. So I printed out some pixs from our previous parties and made a birthday collage. He really liked that and immediately made some room on his wall to hang it.

After the gifts I took him to Bossa Nova in West Hollywood where we had a great time. Chatted about all sorts of things and eat some very yummy foods.

Now for the surprise. I drove him to an unknown location.. at least for him. When the GPS said we were almost there he looked up and noticed a sign and he yelled out loud.. "You're taking me BOWLING!!!"  Come to find out that he loves bowling, he even owns his own pair of shoes and bowling ball. I hit it out of the park with this plan. I was so happy that he was excited to go bowling. I was worried for a while as I felt like it was building up to this big thing and when he found out he would be disappointed.. but it was completely the opposite.

We went inside and found out there was league play until 9:30pm, we had about an hour wait so we head to the bar for a drink and to chat some more. I love chatting with Robert, I always learn new and interesting things about him. At 9:30 we went and grabbed a lane and started to bowl. We played a total of three games. I won the first but was slaughtered in the second and third games. Around 10:30pm we called it and I drove him home and dropped him off.

Had such a FANTASTIC time, we ate some yummy food, played some pretty good bowling and enjoyed each other company. I think you can say this was a successful Birthday celebration. May have started out a bit crazy (with the balloon) but ended on such a high note and that makes me happy.

Happy 28th Birthday Buddy!!!