Dave’s birthday is today!! And did I have a surprise for him….
Awhile back, we were shopping at our favorite local hardware store, Cottin’s, and noticed they had a new t-shirt. They print up a new t-shirt every couple of years, and we have most of them. The latest version had a fun caricature-type drawing of 
Tom, the owner’s, face. Apparently his wife Linda and the staff had done it as a surprise.
Fast forward a couple months and I was trying to come up with something fun for Dave’s birthday. I saw that shirt in the laundry basket- yes, unfolded, for at least a week- and started thinking about something similar. Our Sandbar logo has a cool tiki mask underneath an arched "Sandbar." Dave’s been at The Sandbar so long, he’s kind of like the face of the place…so I asked our resident artist if he could draw Dave’s face for me. No dice, he doesn’t do faces. So I scanned the design from the Cottin’s t-shirt, found a couple of good full front face pictures of Dave, and emailed them off to our friend Missi, of Grandstand Sportswear and Glassware.
A few days later I had a proof of a new, and funny, Sandbar logo- with Dave’s face front and center. After just a tiny bit of tweaking we were ready to go. I ordered 144 pint glasses for the Thursday night Bahama Mama specials and 60 t-shirts of assorted sizes. Surely our family and friends would want one, and perhaps a few random customers would as well.
Missi was awesome helping me coordinate this- Dave had called her to order more pint glasses just before I called. He was supposed to pick up his order yesterday, so I was planning to pick mine up today so for sure wouldn’t run into each other. I called Dave this afternoon to see where he was and ask about switching vehicles 
(six boxes of pint glasses and a giant box of shirts won’t fit in a little Prelude!), and of all places, he was at Grandstand! Missi called me right after he left, laughing about our near-miss. I told Dave a white lie about why I needed his Jimmy, we swapped vehicles, and off I went to Grandstand to pick up my birthday surprise.
Coleen helped plan the second part of the surprise- after I got off work and confirmed Dave wasn’t at the bar, I headed down there. We unloaded the boxes, restocked the pint glasses that had just been restocked, and even sold a few.
I headed home to hang out with Dave- it’s his birthday after all!- and then told him I was going to the bar with him at 9 to have a drink with him, since he still had to work. I got there before him, proudly wearing my new shirt and drinking from a new glass when he arrived. I think he was surprised and thrilled with what I hope was a tribute to him on his birthday.
If you’d like to have your very own limited-edition pint or t-shirt complete with Dave’s likeness, hurry in before they’re gone. The pints are $3, and the shirts are $10.