Day 272: Donatello's Birthday Party

Guess what? My birthday was a few days ago. Ordinarily I don't get too excited for my birthday. I don't hate getting older--most of the time I have to do mental calculations to remember exactly how old I am--I just feel a little uncomfortable with the amount of focus people put on me all of a sudden for one day. This is not to say I haven't enjoyed my birthdays. I've had some good times, last night included. I didn't have a party; we just met some friends for dinner. I got lots of cool Spider-Man and TMNT stuff including the new IDW Volume 1 collection of the original comics autographed by Kevin Eastman!

My wife took the theme of the night in a different, but equally nerdy direction (she threw me a TMNT party a few years ago; I'll get to it in a bit). Over the last few years she's really cultivated a love for baking and decorating things and she's gotten pretty damn good. One of my other (many) loves is Tolkien's Middle Earth. I love all of it, not just Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, but the entire world and all its lore.--

Before I start rambling about Middle Earth I'm going to stop here and promise to explore this in another post.

--My wife has read The Hobbit several times, just finished Lord of the Rings all the way through for the first time and we're both waaaay excited about the upcoming adaptation of The Hobbit. So this year, she made me a book cake. An awesome book cake that looks like it has real pages and... just look at this thing!

It's huge and awesome and, most importantly, delicious. I chose Strawberry cake without knowing what she was making, so she put a cream cheese layer. Get it? Strawberry's and Cream Cake. As in, "Do you remember the taste of strawberry's and cream, Mr. Frodo?" There are layers of meaning to this cake (as well as just regular layers).

So anyway, I drew this picture of Donatello (me) ready to blow out his candles on his birthday. I'm going off the assumption that the Turtles aren't really brothers in the genetic sense and so they celebrate different birthdays. The others aren't screaming in horror, they're singing "Happy Birthday" to him.

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Instead of writing a big long post about my birthday this year I thought I'd share a few pictures from my TMNT birthday from a few years ago.

 My sweet Donatello cake

Ninja Turtle cupcakes made by my good friend Crystal! The TMNT heads were ring party favors.

My friend graciously let me cut the cake with the broken hilt of Narsil. 

Apparently cutting cakes with a sword is a thing I do. I cut my Spider-Man groom's cake with a samurai sword.

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Here are a few pictures my mom gave me of when I was younger. Proof that I have always loved the turtles.

Me at 5 years-old. Note my coordinated outfit.

 My 6th birthday cake.

6 year-old me at some school carnival thing.

Clearly they didn't have a Donatello cut out.

Day 100: Tequila Shots!

Today is a landmark day for more than one reason. First and foremost today marks my 100th picture! I wanted to do something special, but in normal Turtle A Day fashion I was lazy and didn't.

This morning was special because my wife ran the Livestrong 5k in downtown Austin. She ran it in memory of all the friends and family she's lost to cancer and in honor of all the friends and family still battling. She made a shirt with a picture of her Uncle Mike, who she lost to Leukemia a few years ago, on the front and the names of other victims and survivors she collected from friends and family on the back. It was a little scary to see the shirt and realize how many people cancer has affected just in our lives.

She finished the 5k with an unofficial time of around 35 minutes and she even did it while carrying the Build-A-Bear we made for her uncle when he was in the hospital. In addition to running the race she also raised over $500 for the foundation in about a week. She did an excellent job and I'm very proud of her.

The last big news of today is that it's also our friend Shaun's birthday! They have a show tonight (Night of the Living Dead in which Shaun plays a zombie and my wife plays Judy) but afterward we're going out for a few drinks.

Shaun and my wife have a tradition of doing tequila shots together. I almost always assume the role of photographer since I'm allergic to alcohol. This tradition started about five and a half years ago at Casa Rio on the River Walk in San Antonio. They used to do a shot whenever they were in the same state together, but now that Shaun lives here it's mostly for special occasions. On our road trip to Florida a few months ago we stopped and they did shots under the Welcome to Louisiana and Welcome to Mississippi signs (it was too dark going through Alabama and Florida). Tonight we bought him a bottle of somewhat nicer tequila than what they normally drink and I think they're going to do a shot on stage in zombie make-up after the show. I don't drink so I hope he likes the bottle I bought off the recommendation of the guy at the liquor store.

Tomorrow we're getting up bright and early to help some friends move. I'll let you know how their hangovers go during the move.

Day 22: The Ninja Turtles Come Bearing Gifts to Wil Wheaton

I had a totally different post and picture ready to go in my head this morning, but then I logged onto Twitter and everything changed, because today... is Wil Wheaton's birthday.

To some of you that might be meaningless, and it's true that it doesn't directly influence my life, but I feel that as a fan I should pay homage to Mr. Wheaton as I have done on other significant days in the nerd world.

My personal opinion of Wil Wheaton went from "nothing" to "awesome" about a year ago when I saw him guest star in The Guild season 3. I loved his character and I couldn't help but feel like I'd seen him in something else before. A quick search on IMDB turned up a number of things I recognized him from including things like Stand By Me and Stark Trek: The Next Generation. I instantly remembered watching ST:TNG when I was younger and liking his character, Wesley Crusher, simply because we shared a somewhat uncommon name. Nowadays he's busy guest starring in some of my favorite shows.

His acting credits aside Wil Wheaton is also a constant source of entertainment for me through Twitter. He comes across as a genuinely nice person with an often biting and sometimes odd sense of humor, which suits me just fine. It's like reading tweets from a friend (who tweets a lot) and not the carefully constructed public tweets of a celebrity. Interested? You should be. Take a look.

Now let's talk about the picture for a minute, shall we? I had actually been thinking about doing a Wil Wheaton inspired picture for a couple of days, I just didn't think I'd be doing it so soon. Since it's his birthday I had the turtles bring him gifts. What do their presents contain? I'm afraid I can't answer that; They're for Wil, not you. Once again my poor ability to draw humans has resulted in tragedy, but it was an attempt made out of love. Wil is looking a little scary in his D20 shirt and sitting on a raised dais in the captain's chair from the starship Enterprise. I just hope whatever the turtles brought is pleasing to him. Chances are he's got a phaser hidden in that chair somewhere.

For more information on Wil Wheaton check out his blog located at http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/

Day 8: Birthday Party!

Today is a special day. It's my mom's birthday and she's turning somewhere between 23 and 65 years old! She gets a special mention because she gave me life and helped me make the most of it by ensuring I survived long enough to write a blog in which I post terrible and generally stupid pictures of mutant turtles.

This picture is pretty much spot on with what I imagine a birthday party for my mom would be like if the Ninja Turtles were there. Michelangelo is holding up a beer bong for her while she plays with a sparkler in one hand (my mom loves sparklers like you wouldn't believe), Leo and Raph are playing beer-pong and Donatello--ever the creative one--is building a tower out of the most lop-sided beer cans I have ever seen.

While this party seems like fun I'm sure it's nothing compared to what we'll be doing tonight. We're starting with a nice relaxed dinner downtown, but that will quickly be followed with a series of shots on 6th street, some new tattoos, a quick trip to my mom's dealer (his name is Marko), maybe a late-night detour across the border to score some cash and if we're lucky we'll end the night with a high speed chase and a shoot-out. At least I hope that's all that happens. I wouldn't be able to handle it if things got as crazy as last year.