Today is my little sister J’s 25th birthday. As someone so kindly reminded me on facebook via status update comment, yes, it is a little scary when your “little” sister turns 25. That means YOU are definitely over 25. Which…I’m mostly fine with. I don’t think that, growing up, anyone of us ever thought to ourselves, “man, I can’t WAIT to be 34!” or anything over 21, really. Lets face it, nothing cool happens except the ability to rent a car. But we continue to get older. Whatevs.

J and I have been celebrating her birthday preeeeetty well for the last few days. For her 25th, she’s made a list much like my thirty by 30 list, hoping to accomplish 25 badass things before she turns 26. One of those things is to try out 25 new bars in the area. To that end, we headed towards downtown Martinez, where pretty much nothing good ever happens, and we knew we were waaaaay overdressed, but it was 2pm on a Monday afternoon, and we had a goal in mind.

Our first destination (btw, it was our grandma dropping us off. Awesome!) was Ferry Town, which was, tragically, closed for repairs. So we headed to College Lane, where, ironically, the general population has never even thought about attending college, and even if they did consider it, they were about 30-40 years past general application age.

We were a little apprehensive upon entering the scene….turns out that most people had just come from a funeral, which explains the somber mood to a degree. But once we posted up at the bar, the nicest barkeep ever, Nancy, poured us champagne and gave us money to put in the jukebox. We had brought cards to play with, which was super fun, and we got to introduce the rest of the people to Duffel, which is best game ever.

College Town is like a Cheers for dt mtz. Everyone had like ten people shout out their name when they walked in, and had to hug a dozen peeps posted up at the bar. Nancy knew everyone’s order, and everyone showed a polite interest in me and J, as the obvious (and suuuuper over-dressed) newcomers. We were definitely not wearing a third of enough eye makeup and frosty lipstick to be a regular. And we didn’t have a single piece of Ed Hardy knock-off sweatsuit on, so….clearly not MTZ folks.

But I love, LOVE a good dive bar. The bartender, Nancy, told us a bit of her wild past as a 20-something living in Switzerland, and we helped get a drunk off his phone and stop texting that girl who he was too good for, and we ushered some old guys outside for a smoke, and the tab was so, so deliciously cheap.

We went on to Ray’s Lounge, which was tinier and even a bit sketchier, but this guy named Ajax (no, really) who was about 60  years old, told us about growing up in the City, and traveling to Quebec, and bought us a round. We talked Giants for at least an hour. It was fantastic.

Highlight of the day was definitely getting SfGiants and KNBRMurphy to tweet Jenna  happy birthday!!! So freaking cool. I realized that using twitter is basically like texting everyone I know, all at the same time. And I’m really into mass-texting, so I think twitter could work well for me. One step closer to BWils!