Texas Girls Part IV- Let's Dance

After the all night and all afternoon birthday celebration of Spring Bash, we went straight out the next night (on about 5 hours of sleep) to meet up with friends and dance all night at The Church.

About to get our dance on.

I'm about as far as one can get from a goth, a club kid, a raver, a scenester, etc. That being said, the Church is my all time favorite place to dance (with the Catacombs in Boulder coming in a very close second, for many of the same reasons). Yes, lots of people go there in full on gorgeous goth costumes, or steampunk outfits, or over the top creative and insane clothes that would make Party Monster proud.

Bunnies are particularly adept at speed chess (at least the ones found at The Church)

 On the other hand, if, like me, you often show up in jeans, a tank top, and some  Converse, it doesn't.matter.at.all. It is a come as you are kind of place. Some people might call it a freak show. I call it a lot of people who wear what they want and dance however they want until 4 a.m. every Sunday and Thursday night. I dance for hours straight at this place, until I am drenched in sweat, laughing and goofing off with my friends, usually in a little room that plays random 80's hits and pop goth-y music like the Cure. The age range is anywhere from 17 years old to 60+, although most people are around 18 to 30.

Arielle, taking good care of said Bunny's carrot.

Sure, I might sometimes see couples on leashes, or a girl with duct tape and nothing else over her breasts, or a man on stilts, but I can guarantee those people will give me a smile, and we'll all dance happily together on the dance floor. That is far more than I can say about typical top 40 college clubs, where I've often had to resort to physically shoving men off of me who want to "dance", aka grope me along to the beat of some crappy Lil' Wayne song. The Church is happily free of that particular version of frat boy, and for that I love it even more.

Birthday Celebrations- Jumping, Eating, Drinking, Dancing

Since my birthday was on a Wednesday we kept things low key and went out to one of my favorite Italian places in town- I raved about it here after trying it out on Halloween. Afterward we stopped by Olive Garden for their black tie mousse cake (I adore this thing, it's an obsession). They even gave me a little candle when they found out it was my birthday...

The official "birthday party day" was the following Saturday. We started off meeting up with our friends Matt and Paige,  and their son Aidan, at the St. Pat's parade downtown.

 Aidan has his parade plan down- look cute, hold out hand, say please. He cleaned up that day.

 The weather was gorgeous- sunny, warm-ish, not too much of a breeze.

 Bobby, in his festive green thrfit store sweater.

After the parade we grabbed plates of pizza by the slice- that tomato covered pizza was garlic-y goodness. Then it was time to head home for a nap to get ready for the party later that night. I was nerdily stoked about it- like a 7 year old looking forward to a My Little Pony party.

 Later that night we headed out to pick up our friend Rory for our first stop of the night, Jumpstreet- the reason I was filled with the excitement of a 7 year old. Check out our super hi-tech GPS- a post it note of directions stuck to the cracked glove box of our '91 Toyota station wagon. Awesome.

Jumpstreet is an indoor trampoline park, and as such they basically require that you sign your life away upon arriving so that they won't be held responsible for any jumping induced injuries.

Bobby and Alex are super excited to get their jump on.

Rory and I, waiting for our wrist bracelets. You pay by the hour, and they're color coded so they can keep up with when your time is up.

It basically has the feel of a roller skating rink. For a Saturday night, it was remarkably empty. I was really hoping it wouldn't be packed, and my birthday wish was granted.

I know it sounds super nerdy, but seriously this place is fantastic- it's like something you fantasized about making when you were a kid. The huge trampoline area was insane, and it was pretty empty so we had free run of the place.

There were trampoline walls to bounce off of, and the whole area was a patchwork of trampolines divided by bumpers.

This is a video of me executing a fantastic back flip/toe touch combo. Varsity cheerleading might be 10 years in my past as of last Wednesday, but I still got it!

Alex, about to do his own back flip...

Matt and Aidan jumping together...

Trampoline wall birthday party interpretation of the classic "Abbey Road" Beatles' photo. Nerds.

Bobby and Alex didn't appreciate their style being cramped by these rules...

or these, for that matter. I especially like the third one. After our hour was up, we changed into our going out clothes and headed to Boulder for the second half of the night.

We ate at Boulder cafe, and I think I may have fallen in love with their raspberry chipotle BBQ dipping sauce.That hummus plate was my mistress though. And the soup- well, you can't go wrong with poblano pepper corn chowder.

Getting ready for brownie bread pudding birthday dessert- it was spectacular, but how could such a thing not be spectacular?

Apparently Rory and I were very moved by the stirring rendition of Happy Birthday that Bobby and Alex were performing. Either that or we both spontaneously fell asleep.

Yay, another candle! 

After dinner, we headed over to The Catacombs, a bar and club. Let me just say, that place rocked. It reminds me of my favorite dance club in Dallas, The Church. There was a little dance floor in the lower level and the DJ was spinning some really great music. I danced for hours- literally, probably 2 or 3 nonstop. Bobby and I even got to practice West Coast Swing to a few tunes that were amenable to the dance, which was a lot of fun- it's nice to dance outside of class, just for fun. The crowd there was really friendly and we didn't leave until almost 2 a.m. Thankfully Rory let us crash at her apartment so we didn't have to drive home. The next day we slept in until almost noon, and then went out for Thai food in Boulder before driving home.

I'm pretty sure all we did on Sunday was soak our sore jumping/dancing muscles in the hot tub, followed by lots of lazy book reading in bed and an early dinner.  I had so, so, so much fun. I'm very grateful to all my friends and Bobby for making it such a great celebration of turning 28.

Also, for serious, go to Jumpstreet ya'll. It's like a magic time machine back to childhood.