And my third decade begins

Some of you knew that I had a birthday this week. Others of you just found out (It was on the 30th).

I'm not one to make a big deal about birthdays but, nonetheless, I wanted to tell you how I spent it.

As I recall, the birthday is a 24-hour affair, so we must start at midnight. At 12:00, I was sitting in a pub in Jerusalem with Peter watching CNN on one screen and Mars Attacks on another screen, while recalling our daytrips from earlier in the day (I went to Tel Aviv and Peter went to the Dead Sea).

At about 12:15, we left the bar and went our separate ways.

I woke up at about 8:00 to help build another bench at a community garden, this one was in the courtyard of a school for kids with special needs. I left there at about 12:30 to go to work. I slaved over the Penske File until about 5:30 (Arthur Penske thinks I'm Penske material).

After work, I met Ari, Peter and Hy in Kikar Zion to walk to a restuarant by my apartment called Al Dente. It was a very nice Italian Restaurant. I ordered the pumpkin ravioli and was satisfied.

No offense to Mars Attacks (and its all-star cast and Jack Nicholson puts in an Oscar-caliber performance), the delicious meal or the bench building, but I would have to say that I capped off my birthday in the best way possible, watching my first Tigers game since I left the US.

From the restaurant, we went to my apartment to pick up my computer so that we could watch the Tigers-Twins game on mlb.tv using the free wireless on Ben Yehuda Street.


Win or lose, it was a special experience. We camped out on the benches in front of Moshiko Falafel and Shwarma (where you don't buy the falafel, the falafel buys you) and watched the game. Things looked great for the Tigers through seven+ innings. Brent Clevlen (I apologize but he doesn't have detroittigers.com profile yet) turned in a stellar debut, including a brilliant one-hopper from center to get Luis Castillo trying to tag home in the first that set the tone for the game. In the eighth, things didn't go so well for the Tigers, but I was too happy to be watching a Tigers game to have the result change my feelings Just a side note, the Tigers didn't lose their lead until 12:02 on July 31 (Coincidence. I think not).

By the end of the game, my computer's battery had run out, so we had to plug it in at Moshiko to watch the end of the game. Here I am paying for the electicity that I used.


If I would have been in Ann Arbor for my birthday, I would've gotten a free t-shirt, ice cream, car wash and dinner. In Jerusalem, I found no birthday discounts.