Dan's Quarantine Birthday

Last weekend was Dan's birthday, you know, the one where we're in quarantine because Corona. (That's my best Millennial impression, BTdubs.)

My dad sent Dan a funny video of a guy singing a barbershop quartet version of "Happy Birthday," via the split screen technology of which we've been seeing a plethora as of late.

Dad typed this greeting at the bottom: "Remember to stay six feet away from everyone. Of course, you probably already do that."

In case you haven't read my other blog posts, my husband, Dan, is quiet.

Because Dan is quiet, and I, although chatty due to social anxiety, am a homebody, his quarantine birthday wasn't much different from other birthdays.

Plus, Dan and I are forty-somethings, and, as anyone over forty will tell you, our birthdays stopped counting about ten years ago.

So . . . for his quarantine birthday . . .

Dan got a new video game to keep him occupied during quarantine. Come to think of it, I give him a new video game every year.

We went on a birthday bike ride "to see the eagles," as Dan says. A family of bald eagles has nested in a tree on the Greenbelt near our house. Every weekend, we check on the eagles. Of course, we were doing that before quarantine because simple pleasures and everything.

Dan ate ribs and German chocolate cake. Barbecue and German chocolate cake are the same birthday foods he requests every year.

We ended his birthday watching a superhero movie, albeit from our couch rather than from one of those luxury cinema seats.

This year, Dan chose Dark Phoenix.

 

"Matt Talbot released a new demo on Bandcamp!" Dan exclaimed that afternoon. "Did he do that for my birthday?"

Chances are not many of you know who Matt Talbot is, so let me tell you.

During the '90s, Talbot fronted (and still fronts from time to time) a "space rock" band called Hum.

One evening, not long after we met in the early 2000s, Dan was playing a tune on his guitar while I was hanging out with some friends at his apartment.

He made the comment that if a woman ever guessed the song he playing, "I'm going to marry that girl."

I didn't "name that tune," but he married me anyway mostly because I was familiar with one of the band's better known singles.

In other words, Dan loves Hum and Matt Talbot, and the fact that Talbot released a demo on Dan's birthday was (inadvertently on Talbot's part, I'm sure) serendipitous.

I suppose that made Dan's quarantine birthday somewhat unique.

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