Of Birthdays And Blow Torches

or how my family rocks yet again

Okay, so Geo and I took a "Rhett X 2" road trip this weekend, unaware at the planning stage that it was in fact Easter weekend. Easter weekend is big-time fun in my family. Everyone is in town, there's no pressure of presents, we gorge on copious amounts of chow, we celebrate three birthdays and the fun-not to mention the vino-flows as swiftly as a swollen river in the Spring time. You may recall last year's "pulled pork" frivolity here. Big.Time.Fun!!

Anywho, I'm happy to say we made it home in time to help stir up the works at Big Mar's house. It was an absolutely gorgeous day here in Western PA. We sat outside in the sun and cracked open a primo bottle of wine or three.

Okay, six...it was six bottles of wine. Or maybe seven. I don't really recall. My cheeks were numb and I was slurring a bit.

Okay, a lot. But I wasn't alone. My delightful sisters (and a brother-in-law or two) were all partaking and getting loud and demonstrative right along with me.

We like to celebrate birthdays in our family, especially big-ass, zero-year birthdays. This year we had a major birth-of-note deserving of a par-tay. My brother-in-law, David who has been in the family since I was like nine, so really he's just pretty much my brother, turns 70 next week.

Seventy.

How can that even be? He is soooo not a 70 year old. Seriously. He's active and youthful and fun and adventurous and seemingly tireless. He's a real inspiration, setting a very high bar of how one should age. We should all be this lucky. So, role model or not, naturally we had to yank his chain.

Way back when, 20 years ago when Davey turned 50, my brother flipped on a welder's mask, cranked up the blow torch and proceeded to completely melt the candles all over the cake while attempting to light them. Even though I helped concoct that surprise attack, I had to work and was unable to witness the flame-throwing spectacle first hand.

Stupid, Stupid work.

So yesterday, in a moment of spontaneity, my brother--my wonderfully, kooky brother-- dug up a torch from Big Mar's basement and set that cake afire, Baby! We loaded that sucker up with candles and let him have at it.

And it was awesome!!

Sadly, there was no welder's mask this time around, but still... Big.Time.Fun. Watching this video, you can totally tell I was schnockered on the nectar of the Gods so it was funny as Hell to me. It's a good thing I visited the bathroom beforehand because I would have totally tinkled in my pantaloons.

Clearly, we are a shining example for the young ins. :D

Life is so much more entertaining when looking through the lens of fermented grape goggles. It's a good thing we were outside... and that table was glass.

Yeah. My family rocks.