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Archive for the ‘Happy birthday’ Category

Danny Savalza and his ride.

Danny Savalza and his ride.

Austin Fields counters: "That's not a ride. This is a ride. When this thing gets up to 88 MPH, you're gonna see some serious s..."

          Austin Fields counters: “When this thing gets up to 88 MPH, you’re gonna see some serious sh**.”

William H. Macy is intrigued.

William H. Macy is intrigued.

I swear. Birthdays are popping up as fast as the fruit flies around these parts.

Wolf hurdler/record-setting horsewoman Madison Tisa McPhee just had one.

Not only did I not realize it and missed the chance to say “Happy Birthday” to her at PC, I then went and compounded the matter by buying baseball team fund-raiser caramel corn from Korbin Korzan, and not from MTM’s boyfriend, Jake Tumblin.

Now today, we have a 3-for-1 (or 4-for-1, or 6-for-1, depending on how you want to look at it) special.

Wolf football/soccer stud Danny Savalza, CHS golf ace Austin Fields and big-time Coupeville sports booster (and father of Wolf athletes Morgan and Cole) Randy Payne all share the date, along with “Fargo” star William H. Macy.

It’s a birthday-palooza in Cow Town and beyond!!

What’s it all mean? I’m not sure, but, at the very least, it gives us a chance to quote some “Fargo,” which was released when Mr. Savalza, Mr. Fields and Ms. Tisa McPhee were … one year old.

So, so old I am…

“So that was Mrs. Lundegaard on the floor in there. And I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper. And those three people in Brainerd. And for what? For a little bit of money. There’s more to life than a little money, you know. Don’tcha know that? And here ya are, and it’s a beautiful day. Well. I just don’t understand it.”

Or,

“Oh, I just think I’m gonna barf…  Well, that passed. Now I’m hungry again.”

Or,

“He’s fleeing the interview! He’s fleeing the interview!!”

Yeah, I could do this all day…

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This is EXACTLY the same look my middle nephew, three-year old Walker, gets when he's up to something.

     This is EXACTLY the same look my middle nephew, three-year old Walker, gets when he’s up to something.

Seconds later the notoriously creaky deck at my Nana's house crumbled and we fell into the ocean!!

         Seconds later the notoriously creaky deck at my Nana’s house crumbled and we fell into the ocean!!

Sure, they call it "espresso..."

Sure, they call it “espresso…”

"They're not just burritos, they're all-natural, green burritos, man. Only $1!!"

“They’re not just burritos, they’re all-natural, green burritos, man. Only $1!!”

"Well hello there, ladies!!"

“Well hello there, ladies!!”

It’s Justin Bieber’s birthday today. So, there’s that.

Of more importance, however, is March 1 is also the birthday of my little sister, Sarah (Svien) Kirkconnell, a much more talented person than the swaggy one.

We’re not going to publicly say which birthday this is (it’s a round one), as I am unsure what her mood might be this morning.

Since I still bear the (psychological) scars from when she charged down a hallway and launched herself, velociraptor-style, onto my back after I changed the channel in the midst of a Cure marathon on MTV (that’ll tell you her age…), I am a little more cautious these days.

There was also the time she took a bunch of fuzzy caterpillars, mashed them together, cooked them on the grill and tried to pass them off as a hamburger to me. And then the time she … how much time do we have?

But the girl with the sky-high Mohawk who hung out at espresso places in the pre-Starbucks, much more “smoke-filled” days, has become a wife, mother of three boys and the founder of a staggeringly successful internet food empire.

She may not quite be Martha Stewart yet, but you try and make a run at her in the world of on-line food bloggers and you’ll find a tofu horse head in your bed the next morning. No one messes with her daily UPS and FedEx deliveries, box upon box of goodies from every company under the sun.

While she’s 22 months younger than I am, she has always been the smarter one. The one with more business sense. The one who accomplished things.

The little girl who used to kick people in the nads and then stand there innocently twisting her foot in the ground, making googly, Shirley Temple eyes at the principal (while I got detention after detention and more than once had to wear the plaid pants they kept in the office for people who got themselves covered in mud) grew up to became a barista goddess (who hit me in the face with a phone during our days at Videoville and Miriam’s Espresso).

The young women once caught on King-5 elbowing fellow Grateful Dead fans in the face in a battle for a better seat has become the epitome of a successful adult.

Every day, in every way, she has become a remarkable person. Our parents would be very proud of where she has taken her life.

They aren’t here to tell her that, but I know it to be true.

From the days when she was obsessed with seeing EVERY SINGLE Jean-Claude Van Damme film on the big screen to the days of driving a mini-van, she’s come a long way and done it with style.

Happy birthday, Silver!!

Oh, I’m gonna pay for that one…

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showerToday is the day Brian Norris was born, so it’s hard to say no to the guy.

Therefore, at his request, and after much shameless pleading by the Coupeville High School baseball star, we present the first group photo of “The Shower Boys.”

Left to right, they are Kurtis Smith, Jake Tumblin, Tim Quinn, Oscar Liquidano, Luke Pelant, Norris, Danny Savalza and Jacob Lovell.

And I remind you, this was NOT my idea. This was all Brian Norris!!

And my phone call from Lori Stolee comes in three, two, one…

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Brian Norris, national spokesman for feline AIDS awareness. (Shelli Trumbull photos)

    Brian Norris, national spokesman for feline AIDS awareness. (Shelli Trumbull photos)

He also plays a little baseball.

He also plays a little baseball.

And wins state titles, too.

And wins state titles, too.

According to Facebook, Brian Norris is 23 years old today.

Which makes it kind of awkward that he’s still playing first base for the Coupeville High School baseball team. You would have thought he would have graduated by now.

Unless, of course, the master of Facebook status update bombing, a man who lives for the chance to suddenly pop up on innocuous posts about Tolo dresses and drop some serious feline AIDS knowledge on the world before scampering away, is messing with us all.

Hmmm…

Well, either way, we take a moment to pay tribute to the rapidly-aging leader of the now-banned vuvuzela horn movement. Party on, Mr. Norris.

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The ever-radiant Jennifer Saxman and her adorable daughter.

The ever-radiant Jennifer Saxman and her adorable daughter.

It’s Jennifer Saxman’s fault.

23 years of an on-again-off-again journalism career started because a young woman who I really didn’t know all that well went out of her way to be nice to me.

A long list of editors I have chafed over the years will surely be happy to finally have a name to hang their pain on.

But I’m serious. Without Ms. Saxman, who celebrates her birthday today, I probably wouldn’t be where I am now, uncovering the hidden stories of Coupeville sports and flipping the bird to the robber barons up in Moosejaw who now own all the local newspapers.

When my dad decided to suddenly move us from Tumwater to Whidbey Island in the middle of 12th grade, thus opening up the rare chance to serve out an extra semester of high school against my will, I was ticked off.

When I signed up for the six classes I would have to endure as a fifth-year senior, with my graduation now bumped to January of 1990 instead of June of ’89, I ended up with a motley mix that included two teachers that no rational student wanted (I later learned), a class on how to start a small business (that I skipped on a regular basis) and, despite the protests of a counselor, journalism.

Using the three published stories I had from my time at THS (a graphic story on child sexual abuse, an editorial calling for Ted Bundy to be fried and a third piece lost to the mists of time), I fast-talked my way past the journalism teacher (current News-Times Sports Editor Jim Waller), and then ran into Saxman.

A radiant, confident young woman with a mane of curls, Jennifer was one of those rare examples of a person who you know is going places even at a young age. While the rest of us flopped around, she moved with a genuine grace.

As the Sports Editor of the Oak Harbor High School newspaper, The Breeze, she didn’t have to let me have a single story.

She didn’t know me, I had no actual sports clips and when everyone else volunteered to write one story, I rashly insisted I could write the whole sports section and maybe she should let me write a column while we were at it.

And to my great surprise, she let me. And she didn’t take the column away even when I started getting angry “fan letters” the very next week.

For whatever reason, the brilliant young woman who would go on to be a successful psychologist and mom to a really cute little girl, let me babble away.

Thousands of stories, hundreds of “fan letters” and a lot of burnt bridges later, I’m still at it. The venue changes, but the writing has never stopped.

But it likely would never have started without Jennifer Saxman.

So today, on her birthday, I offer a public thank you to a woman who, with one gesture, gave me a new direction in life.

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