Happy Birthday Daddy-O!

Since I’m ridiculously busy today with workstuff in addition to frassin’ with memorizing lines (South Dakota? Where are you? When are we going again? Soon?) I wanted to take today’s post to give a shout out to my Pa-tater! He celebrating his big-kid birthday today by frassin’ around he and mom’s townhome, and I get to meet them tonight for dinner at the Istanbul Café’. This is of course subject to change as the actual process of settling on a restaurant took the better part of a half an hour. What with the phone being passed back and forth between parents, my frustration born from repeatedly saying "Dad, it’s your birthday…YOU pick". Then there was his sneaky way of getting my mom to acquiesce to helping him clean their TH house top to bottom. ("What time are you and Mo getting over here?"/"Uh, dad, Mo’s with her folks tonight…it’s just me?"/"So, you’re ‘both’ getting here around 6:30?"/"Um, dad…I just kinda said"/"Just go with me here, Mikey"…you get the picture.) I was also called a "little sonuvabitch" b/c I was googling the restaurants he was suggesting as he rattled them off. ("Dad, if you’d just give up that stupid Webtv and get the actual Interweb you could be doing that too!"

Actually, they’d probably spend their days surfing. For two seniors whose fave pasttime is playing PC spider solitaire? Probably a dangerous hobby.

So here are a bunch of random dad facts to celebrate his big kid day! Enjoy!

-He’s hilarious
-To my chagrin, he’s quite the ladykiller (Back off girls, he’s taken)
-He’s uber tall…which p#sses my brother and I off to no end. (My friend Ry-gonn commented once "So where did you and RSvP’s height go?")
-He’s a storyteller. If you meet him, please get on his case to write his memoirs. Why…?
-He served close to 40 years in law enforcment. (Including the Eff Bee Eye!) The man has stories…which he will tell you…and he will talk…for hours.
-Did I mention that he loves talking.
-He loves finding new restaurants
-He loves going on daytrips
-He loves my hairy younger brother, Rocky…even though he threatens to send that stupid dog -home with me every time I see him.
-Even though it frustrates the pants off of me, he really likes my house and threatens to move in regularly.
-We used to play racquetball. There’s a funny story I can tell ya if I’m loaded where he threatened to moon me for "schooling him" and I…well, again…buy me a cocktail and I’ll tell ya.
-Was responsible for taking the family on cross country road trips, and subsequently is the reason why my fam has set foot in nearly all the contiguous United States and Canada.
-He’s a very ambitious cook. Not…always… good? (Spam stir fry, anyone?) but he loves frassin’ with recipes he finds in the newspaper and on the box/can.
-He looks out for people. I have a very vivid memory of him getting in the face of a dad who yelled at me for (probably) goofing around.
-Very Loyal. (Where do you think Frack and I get it?)
-Was my driving instructor before I took "Behind the Wheel". That Sumbitch made me (at age 15) drive through Uptown during the art fair. All I remember is freaking out at all the traffic, and him screaming out the window (GET OUT OF THE ROAAAAD! DRIVE! GAWDAMMIT!)
-He would frequently disclaimer "Mikey…don’t ever drive like me")
-He’s met Governor’s, Presidents, celebrities, foreign heads of state (Ask him about giving Gorbachev a hat sometime)


He’s kind of a character…Happy birthday Daddy-O. Love you.