Birthday and Spring Break Festivities (Part 1)

As some of you may know the word birthday doesn't properly describe the amount of times I force people to go out and celebrate my birth. It used to be that birthmonth was a better description of my celebration but as I get older I have scaled back my celebration to a birthfortnight. The beauty of the birthfortnight is that it still encompasses St. Patrick's Day AND since I refuse to leave academia I still get a spring break that usually falls within the birthfortnight also. Being that I was in a new town planning the birthfortnight was a little tricky. I didn't know the lay of the land and I don't really party as much as I used to (because of grad school NOT maturity OR old age) so I was stumped for a bit on what to do. But then good ole kismet kicked in.

A couple of my friends and I were driving back from Disneyland (where I know have a season pass to) and we passed a billboard about Medieval Times. I thought the only MT was in Jersey but I was mistaken. Through I simple conversation I had find out that all of my Claremont friends had never been to MT. Now lets be clear, I had to go to MT two times on class trips and both times were horrendous. I hate the food and anytime a I had spend an entire day with my entire class was usually a recipe for disaster. But being a good Jersey girl I realized I had to suck it up, do my duty, and introduce these graduate students to the wondrous cheesiness that is Medieval Times!

The one detail that I didn't know about Medieval Times but that made it even better was there was beer:

The beer made the roast chicken taste better. Ha! Who am I kidding? I traded my chicken for an extra spare rib. Anyway, we were cheering for the Yellow Knight and it was fantastic. We were screaming, hooting, and hollering any chance we could get. It also turns out that my friends paid a little extra to get the birthday package. This package was high class. Not only did I get a group picture of all of us, I also got an official program, AND a dvd copy of the knight's festivities. (hahaha get it?). But wait that's not all! I also got a birthday shout out by the king himself! That's right, after they welcomed north shore high school, and wished johnny a happy thirteenth birthday, there was a shout out for a happy 25th birthday for Lyza Fosse!

Aside: Lyza wasn't actually a mispronunciation of my name. There is another friend of mine named Elise and it's been hard to distinguish between the two of us. It got to the point that we were being addressed as PhD Elise and Masters Elyse. I wasn't really cool with that. Then we were all at this part and this guy kept on calling me Lyza. No kidding it was at least the third time I had met him and everytime he's been all "Hey Lyza" and I've been all "umm it's Elyse." But Meryl has always taught me you correct somebody three times and after that it's just not worth it. So my friends caught wind that this guy was calling me Lyza and the name stuck. A new nickname. Great.

This time at Medieval Times was by far the best the experience I've had there. Don't fret though, the next part of the birthday festivities was even better...Vegas!!(Coming soon).