Another BDay, another successful trip to VaBeach! Naomi and I drove down Friday night, amazingly not hitting much traffic at all, the upside to ridiculously high gas prices. Saturday was spent at the Expo and the beach and visiting with Brian's family, his sister made a rockin' pre-race night curry. Admittedly, I was a little concerned about eating curry the night before a race but it turned out wonderfully. Sunday morning was the half marathon. Brian and I came in at 1:48, he beat me by one second and was one second away from getting his name in the paper the next day for being in the top 500 runners. If he hadn't spent the last 3 or so miles trying to keep me on pace he would have been in there easily, but I like to think he didn't mind TOO much. Anyway, thank you Brian, now let's just hope I can sort out what a Port-a-jon is for before the marathon. 1:48 puts us right on track for our 3:40 marathon goal, we just need to do another one of those, keeping up the same pace, easy right? Uh huh, sure, no problem.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing and attempting to recover before partying for Becca's and my birthday that night. Naomi, Brian and I started drinking in the room at about 4:30 and I was nice and toasty by the time we made it to Mahi Mah's for dinner. It was very very yummy, sushi, fried oysters and tuna with some really good sauce on it. We had to wait for our table for about an hour and a half, and Naomi and Brian made the mistake of allowing me to order the first round of drinks. I got Naomi's margarita ok but unfortunately I ordered Manhattans for Brian and I by mistake, oops. You may wonder how it was I managed to order Manhattans by mistake, and if you do, you've obviously never been out drinking with me.

After dinner was the Journey concert, which was great fun, lots of good sing-a-long swaying songs on the beach on a perfect late summer night. Afterwards, Becca and Patrick decided to go walk on the beach and the rest of us piled into Amanda's car to go to a bar. Sadly, we gave up after 20 minutes of trying to get drinks and decided to try another bar, by this time, however, Brian and I were both about to fall asleep on our feet so we wussed out and made the 17 block walk back to the hotel instead, where we promptly crashed. I guess I'm just getting old, so sad.

Anyway, thanks to everyone that came and cheered us on, and who helped Becca and I celebrate!