My Rowdy Birthday Buddy



Regular readers here know my frequent commenter Rowdy Republican, aka Rowdy.
She lives here in San Antonio and I've known her for close to 15 years. We share the same birthday, April 30. In many ways, she reminds me of a miniature version of me.
I guess the one bright side of her being a Republican is that she's been known to vote for Democrats when the occasion warrants it. Lately, that's often the case.
My favorite thing about Rowdy is not that she's rich, it's that she spends money like she's trying to set the record for having fun with it.
See, in Texas, a lot of rich folks have a certain flamboyancy unparallelled in other areas of the nation.
Several years ago on the Fourth of July, she hosted a party at her parent's snazzy house. Fearing that the pool water would be too warm, she had an ice company deliver three refrigerator-sized blocks of ice to cool the water down.
Needless to say, I was delighted to accept her invitation to celebrate our birthdays together last night at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse.
I met her at her office, where in the parking lot I spied her enormous white Toyota Tundra double cab V-8 pick-up truck. The truck is big enough to host a sit down dinner for six and almost hilarious in its conspicuousness. It was the perfect vehicle for her.

Off we went to dinner. Fuck the appetizers, we started with two jumbo Grey Goose martinis.
I was amazed when she asked me to select the wine, so I picked what I thought would be a nice French Bordeaux. At $110 a bottle, I thought that mofo HAD BETTER be good.

At first I thought I'd order a nice fillet mignon, but Rowdy insisted I order instead the bone-in Texas Rib eye. The damn thing was the size of my head with the bone about the circumference of an adult femur.
She ordered a nice, fat lobster and we shared sides of broccoli and creamed spinach.
As we tucked in to eat, she kept eyeing her wine glass with what looked like the slightest hint of disdain.
I asked if she was unhappy with it, and she made a little face that looked like this :/
In a flash, she was asking the waiter for the wine list and ordered up a bottle of 2000 vintage Opus One. Opus One is the happy offspring from the marriage between Baron de Rothchild and Robert Mondavi. I know it's gauche to mention prices, but I nearly fainted with I saw the $400 price tag.
I protested that it was too expensive, but she said, "But it's our birthday!"
And so it was.
Rowdy has a talent I was unaware of until last night. She can strip a lobster down to the shiny red shell without leaving even a tiny thread of meat. She needs no bib. She is a lobster eating artist.
Meanwhile, I sawed away at my indescribably perfect rib eye for what seemed like hours, only to watch it stay the same size. I brought home a chunk that still would serve four.
We had planned to argue politics during dinner, but we were having so much fun stuffing our faces and drinking that liquidy velvet, neither of us had the inclination.
As a lover of good food and wine, I was in a stupefied state of grace last night.
The atmosphere was nice, the service was perfect and the company couldn't have been better. What a wonderful way to celebrate my advancing senility.
Rowdy is single, and for the life of me I cannot see how that can be.
She's one hell of a catch...even for a Republican.