Viva Colombia!

Los Angeles, California

To Paraphrase Garrison Keillor, It has not been a quiet week in Lake Woebegon. Or, at least not here in La LA Land. It has been Joel's birthday week, and... I write that without irony. Back in the day, I celebrated a birthday month, so he is indeed, at least, entitled to a week. And, he has been on vacation. A nine-dayer starting on a Thursday when we went to our favorite Mexican restaurant to drink beer (Joel) and tequila (me) at the bar and watch the Dodgers play. The next night we were out at a local club on their Colombian night. Dancing normally starts at ten, but they had opened early so they could watch Colombia v. Costa Rica in the Copa America soccer championship. Colombia won, so the Colombian clientele were joyful (and drunk). The club was crowded, but one of the things we like about sharing the dance floor with Colombians is that their style of dancing is very close and their movement compact. You don't get trod on. So we danced and drank a little (beer/tequila).

After hanging around and in the pool over the weekend, we went out for Chinese food on Sunday night and then to a different local club to dance. We had been there once before but it had since been remodeled with a very nice and clean (especially after the last club and all their drinking and spilling) dance floor. We stayed until midnight (late for us but this was J's vacation after all).

And then Tuesday rolled around, which is J's actual birthday. We went to a local diner for an early lunch and back home to hang out more and watch an actual Copa America game, Colombia v. Brazil. Colombia didn't win. The score was 1-1. But, unlike in baseball, this can still advance you. Brazil was out; Colombia advanced. After the game, we went out for oysters which is half of what we do for each of our birthdays. The other half was waiting for us at the club with the Colombians. Were they joyful (and drunk) like last time? No. They were ecstatic and bombed. They weren't even collecting a cover charge at the door. It was Bienvenidos, come on in! The floor was so sticky, you could hardly pick up your feet to dance. But their palpable glee was infectious and, especially since it was Joel's birthday, we had a blast. When he refused the free drink the bartender offered him she asked me if I wanted a shot. Are you kidding? Later, after Joel did accept a beer from our friend, Iggy, we saw the bartender dancing alongside us. We danced until the non-Colombian DJ started playing too much regaeton (my spellcheck wants to change that word to rigatoni). We left around midnight. It was the third time we had danced that week. If only life were all birthday vacations!

We got in some pool R + R in before Joel returned to work three days later, and I turned back to the tediousness of some home remodeling. There are very few things I find more banal than house projects, but houses need repair and updating. And you just can't dance that stuff away. So life as we know it moved on. Birthdays come and go, you know. Meanwhile, Colombia played Uruguay and slammed them, 5-0. Hence advancing to the upcoming finals against Argentina. Argentina's good. See, I'm learning something here, even though the game we watched had commentary entirely in Spanish and all I got was an occasional híjole! But that final, Colombia v. Argentina, is still to come. And at least I do know enough Spanish to write: Viva Colombia!