The Big Three Six
Yes, today was the day on which I turned thirty and six years of age. Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday! You guys are awesome.
I had a small gathering of friends and family at my favorite Indian restaurant last night, which went quite well except for two of my friends getting those angry confrontational sparks between them at one point. My friend Ali, though I love her dearly, is fiercely competitive, assertive and combative, and my friend Gabriel is very sensitive, competitive and can be very easily riled. So having them in the same room is like trying to keep the powder keg and the flame away from each other, which I can easily see taking more energy and skill than I have. Luckily they only meet once a year, when I have these parties. Gabriel was saying at the end of the night, "Yeah, we should all get together more often than once a year!" and I had to bite my tongue. If they want to get together without me, they're more than welcome, but for me once a year of this anxiety is enough. This is one of the reasons I don't do hosting.
Other than that, dinner was great. I went to a friend's house with Gabriel and his mother afterwards, and we stayed up and drank for a while and had a good old time. Kirby, the friend whose house we stayed at, has five huge dogs, one of which is a rottweiler--my favorite breed--on whom I fell asleep. She was quite nice about it; didn't even move between the time I went to sleep and the time I woke up. Very sweet dog.
Today I went to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with Ali, and that was wonderful. Really, between Sherlock, Tinker Tailor and this I'm very spoiled for movies this month. The only other one that's out now that I really want to see is Hugo, since I recently read The Invention of Hugo Cabret and thought it was quite beautiful. The story was rich and the narrative illustrations told as much story as the words, if not more. It looks like a long book, but it really isn't at all. It's a wonderful work. I haven't actually heard or read anything about the film, so I don't have any idea how it compares. Perhaps I'll see it this week, once I start getting paid again.
When I got home from that, dad made some fresh red snapper with crab and oyster stuffing for my birthday dinner which was excellent. Dad definitely knows how to cook a fish. Fresh fish has been a specialty of his for longer than I've been alive. Mom made me a cake--a sort of dense orange spice cake with cranberries and cream cheese frosting--that I wanted to like, since she'd gone through a lot of effort to make it, but I really didn't. I don't like spice cakes or fruitcakes. She thought I'd like it because I liked a cake we got from a Cuban bakery that had fresh fruit on top, and I had to explain that a fruitcake is different from a yellow cake with fruit on top. I don't know how it came about in her mind so that I would have to explain such a thing, but there we are. At least she didn't make some sort of zucchini side dish. I hate zucchini. What she did do, though, was buy me a cookbook by Michael Symon, which made me very very happy.
So that was pretty much my birthday. CP asked me to post about it here, so here it be. I was going to post anyway, but I probably would have waited until tomorrow if he hadn't asked. He's out trimming trees in Oregon, battling sciatica. I called him tonight when it looked like he wasn't going to email me for my birthday, and sure enough he had forgotten what day it was. Thought it was the fourteenth, or so he says. :D We talked for a long time. I say we, of course it was mostly me. He's the only person I'm happy to just natter away to about whatever's on my mind or on the screen in front of me, so he's the only person I don't mind talking to on the phone. I still only call him once every few months. More than that would open a portal into hell, I think. Better safe than sorry.
I had a small gathering of friends and family at my favorite Indian restaurant last night, which went quite well except for two of my friends getting those angry confrontational sparks between them at one point. My friend Ali, though I love her dearly, is fiercely competitive, assertive and combative, and my friend Gabriel is very sensitive, competitive and can be very easily riled. So having them in the same room is like trying to keep the powder keg and the flame away from each other, which I can easily see taking more energy and skill than I have. Luckily they only meet once a year, when I have these parties. Gabriel was saying at the end of the night, "Yeah, we should all get together more often than once a year!" and I had to bite my tongue. If they want to get together without me, they're more than welcome, but for me once a year of this anxiety is enough. This is one of the reasons I don't do hosting.
Other than that, dinner was great. I went to a friend's house with Gabriel and his mother afterwards, and we stayed up and drank for a while and had a good old time. Kirby, the friend whose house we stayed at, has five huge dogs, one of which is a rottweiler--my favorite breed--on whom I fell asleep. She was quite nice about it; didn't even move between the time I went to sleep and the time I woke up. Very sweet dog.
Today I went to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with Ali, and that was wonderful. Really, between Sherlock, Tinker Tailor and this I'm very spoiled for movies this month. The only other one that's out now that I really want to see is Hugo, since I recently read The Invention of Hugo Cabret and thought it was quite beautiful. The story was rich and the narrative illustrations told as much story as the words, if not more. It looks like a long book, but it really isn't at all. It's a wonderful work. I haven't actually heard or read anything about the film, so I don't have any idea how it compares. Perhaps I'll see it this week, once I start getting paid again.
When I got home from that, dad made some fresh red snapper with crab and oyster stuffing for my birthday dinner which was excellent. Dad definitely knows how to cook a fish. Fresh fish has been a specialty of his for longer than I've been alive. Mom made me a cake--a sort of dense orange spice cake with cranberries and cream cheese frosting--that I wanted to like, since she'd gone through a lot of effort to make it, but I really didn't. I don't like spice cakes or fruitcakes. She thought I'd like it because I liked a cake we got from a Cuban bakery that had fresh fruit on top, and I had to explain that a fruitcake is different from a yellow cake with fruit on top. I don't know how it came about in her mind so that I would have to explain such a thing, but there we are. At least she didn't make some sort of zucchini side dish. I hate zucchini. What she did do, though, was buy me a cookbook by Michael Symon, which made me very very happy.
So that was pretty much my birthday. CP asked me to post about it here, so here it be. I was going to post anyway, but I probably would have waited until tomorrow if he hadn't asked. He's out trimming trees in Oregon, battling sciatica. I called him tonight when it looked like he wasn't going to email me for my birthday, and sure enough he had forgotten what day it was. Thought it was the fourteenth, or so he says. :D We talked for a long time. I say we, of course it was mostly me. He's the only person I'm happy to just natter away to about whatever's on my mind or on the screen in front of me, so he's the only person I don't mind talking to on the phone. I still only call him once every few months. More than that would open a portal into hell, I think. Better safe than sorry.