
I don’t mean to brag, but my off-work life is a little too awesome. Of course, work is a punch in the face I get to endure five days a week, but hopefully I’ll get that part figured out eventually. For now, I’m just glad it lets me live it up with Laura before, after, and on the weekends.
About three months ago, Laura found out Jack’s Mannequin would be playing in Norfolk, VA on my birthday weekend. Considering Jack’s Mannequin is one of our favorite bands (in fact one of the first conversations we ever had with each other revolved around our mutual agreement about how awesome Andrew McMahon is) we HAD to go to the show, and decided we might as well spend a couple days there since we were going to be driving five hours anyway.
Day 1
Day 1 saw us getting up nice and early so we could drop two of the dogs off with Laura’s awesome mom in Smithfield, NC. Our great friend Brandy agreed to watch Roxy for us so Laura’s mom wouldn’t be overwhelmed (she already has two dogs in her house herself).

Luna had no idea about the abandonment that lay ahead.
We arrived in Norfolk around 1PM, just in time to grab lunch at No Frill Grill, a local hot sandwich restaurant chain that Laura discovered with the help of urbanspoon.com – our new go-to website for deciding where to eat. I got the delicious Funky Chicken Sandwich (a grilled chicken breast with TONS of bacon on toasted rye bread with some sort of special sauce) and Laura got a nice big cheeseburger (I can’t remember the contents, but I tried a bite and it was just as tasty as my sandwich).

Afterwards, we headed to the hotel to sign in so we could grab a nap before the show, so we’d be fully awake for everything we’d been waiting three months for. The Norva’s doors were supposed to open at 6:30, so we woke up around 5:30 to head downtown to try to get a good position on the open floor venue.
After purchasing our t-shirts and getting our stuff to the coat check so we wouldn’t have to hang on to it, the show finally kicked off at 7:30 with Vedera. If you remember Sixpence None the Richer or Plumb from the late 90’s early 00’s, then Vedera is kind of like the latest version of that song. Though they were the band we were least excited about, but the lead singer’s astonishingly beautiful voice made it a very pleasant addition to the venue. She’s not remotely a screamer – she just has a very pretty voice, and it was impressive to see her hold her ground against the rock guitar and the Nirvana-wannabe bassist. (Hear them here)

Vedera
Round two brought Fun., the most aptly named band ever. Prior to this concert, I had never even heard of them, but when I found out the opening acts, I downloaded all the necessary albums so I’d be fully prepared to get the most out of the concert. While I enjoyed Vedera’s cd’s, I absolutely fell in love with Fun.

Fun.
Fun. (the period is part of their name) is unique indie pop-rock band, that might be the mostly blatantly anti-emo band I’ve ever heard. In an age where whining is what sells albums to teenage consumers, Fun. prefers to rock their keyboard, trumpet, and violins with the most optimistic, happy lyrics you’ll hear outside of preachy Christian rock. A month ago I had never heard of them, and now they’re one of my new favorite bands ever.
As far as their live performance goes, I was slightly disappointed at first (though not surprised) to find that the violins on the album had been completely dropped, but realized as soon as they started playing that it absolutely didn’t matter. The energy this band carries with them is insane. I felt like I was one of about 10 people in the audience that could sing along (one of the others being Laura), but everyone else seemed to be having just as good of a time anyway. Basically they were amazing. (Hear them here)

Jack's Mannequin
Lastly, the “band” we were there to see was Jack’s Mannequin, which basically Andrew McMahon making three other people play music he wrote while he rocks out on the piano and hundreds of teenage girls scream at the top of their lungs. McMahon is an incredible entertainer and the show was more than I’d even hoped for. Jack’s Mannequin’s first album Everything in Transit is one of my top ten albums of all time, and they played all but three songs from it. My only disappointment was he didn’t play “Dear Jack”, from his latest EP, but you can’t win ‘em all and he played just about everything else that would have fit the energy of a live concert. (Hear them here)

Andrew McMahon likes to stand on his piano.
After having our minds blown by three outstanding performances, we headed to Kelly’s Backstage Bar, a little late-night place just behind the Norva.We decided to split a couple appetizers of cheese fries (LOADED with bacon) and buffalo chicken bites, which I topped off with a Guinness, making for a perfect after-show meal to energize our throbbingly sore muscles from standing 6 hours straight.
We got back to the hotel around 1AM, and passed out almost immediately.
Day 2
We woke up the next morning around 8AM to try to get as much out of our day as possible. After getting ready and heading out we arrived for breakfast at The Broken Egg Bistro around 9AM and were seated by 9:30 (THAT is how good this place is). Another urbanspoon.com discovery, Broken Egg Bistro might be the best breakfast I’ve ever eaten – and that’s coming from somebody who typically skips breakfast and only eats it on special occasions.
Both of decided to get the combo meal. I got two eggs over easy, cinnamon swirl french toast, hashbrowns, and bacon. Laura got two eggs scrambled with cheese, pancakes, hashbrowns and bacon. Now, over easy eggs are hard to mess up so long as they don’t break, but this french toast might have been the best balance of tastiness I’ve ever had for breakfast. Likewise, Laura’s pancake were bigger than my head and cooked to perfection – not too fluffy, not to stiff. Just perfect. The bacon had a pretty optimum meat to fat ratio and while it wasn’t seasoned like a lot of breakfast places do, it didn’t need it. The hashbrowns were also cooked flawlessly with an astonishing amount of flavor for diced potatoes. In case that isn’t impressive enough, let me go ahead and warn you that neither of were hungry again for the entire day until we ate dinner at 7:30. That means our breakfast lasted nearly ten hours.

After breakfast we headed to the Virgina Beach Aquarium, which had everything a good aquarium needs to have short of penguins. There were sharks, otters, crocodiles, pettable stingrays (which Laura went into full girly mode for and refused to touch), a tunnel aquarium and the easiest scavenger hunt ever.

- Step one on the hardest scavenger hunt of our LIVES.
Sure it was designed with five year olds in mind, but Laura and I were determined to prove we could do it just as well as the girl scout party that was there. Even though they had an IMAX, we were only going to be in town for the day and were determined to see as many animals as possible.

We hung around the aquarium until 2PM before we decided we should head over to the zoo so we’d have plenty of time to walk around before its 5 o’clock closing time. The Virginia Zoo has a mere $8 ticket cost, and while it’s not outstanding, I’d love to live in a town with something even this simple. Most of the main African animals are on display including ostriches, antelope, giraffes, zebras, and lions. Supposedly there are rhinos but I guess they put them up for the winter because we couldn’t find them anywhere. Other attractions included kangaroos, a nocturnal hut, quite a few birds, and what I can only assume was the Food Section that consisted solely of pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys and goats.

Simba and Nala
Aside from being attacked by geese (because geese are CRAZY), there also seemed to be a rogue peacock roaming around the park. We first came across it in the prairie dog area and thought that was an awfully strange mixture of animals until the peacock jumped over the back wall and later appeared near the Food Section. “Birds won’t hurt people” seemed to be a strongly held belief throughout the zoo as there were also free roaming turkeys to compliment the rogue peacock and velociraptor-geese. Clearly someone needs to catch up on their Hitchcock movies.
We left the zoo around four and headed back to the hotel to take a swim and relax our sore legs in the spa before heading back downtown so Laura could get some pictures.

Dinner was a disappointing $121 meal at Virginia Beach’s over-priced Brazilian Steakhouse Espeto na Brasa. “They served us raw chicken,” should sum it up. This was the only low point on the entire trip and I take full responsibility. I was blinded by the thought of all-you-can-eat meat, and foolishly ignored the 65% approval rating on Urban Spoon. Most of the food was still decent and we left completely full, but slow service and raw chicken insured we would never return or recommend it to anyone else – especially when it comes with such a steep pricetag.
But enough of that. The rest of the day was fantastic, just like the day before.

- See those skies? That’s how awesome this weekend was.
Day 3
The third day of the best weekend ever was highlight by an afternoon with my family. Laura and I arrived back in my hometown of Rocky Mount, NC around 12:30. My amazing family had prepared an equally amazing lunch of steak and potatoes and even surprised me with a few restaurant favorites that they had my brother and sister pick up before we started.
Elijah got rolls from Golden Corral (which my parents had bought some nacho cheese for – one of my favorite weird combinations since I was about 10 years old). My sister and her husband picked up T.G.I. Friday’s peanut butter pie, a dessert I was terrified I’d never get to have again. We had discovered it in some random airport two or three years ago and for some reason thought it was a Chili’s so the next time we went to one we tried to order it but they didn’t have it. It was my dad that somehow remembered the actual restaurant in time for Sarah and David to get it for my birthday “cake”.
Afterward we played a game of Man Laws and Woman Rules, the newest addition to my massive board game collection. Sexism abounded and laughs, scowls, and scoffs were all had.
It was a great joining of the families (sister, brother-in-law, brother, brother’s girlfriend, parents, and Laura) to end the best weekend ever. Unfortunately my older brother Seth couldn’t make it, but I at least got to talk to him on the phone.
We left around the same time as Sarah and David to go back to Laura’s parents’ house to grab the dogs and finally head home.
Best. Birthday. Ever.























