Birthday, birthday, birthday
I am now thirty years old. My birthday occured on 4th July - yep, I'm an American Independence Day baby :) My mother does not like the idea that she has a thirty year old daughter lol. Anthony and I took the day off work, we had a little lie in and after I opened a few presents, we went out to a local cafe for a lovely fry-up breakfast, one of my favourite ever meals. After that delicious greasiness, we went home and I opened more presents. I got lovely things from my family - including films, Doctor Who DVDs, the complete Horrible Histories series on DVD, books, and a wrestling t-shirt that I really wanted. I also got some lovely cards from family and friends. We headed off to London after that, it was scorching there but we were dressed for the weather and got to our booked hotel in good time. After a nice rest, we got dressed up. One of the things I wore was a pair of earrings that my parents got me for my birthday. I really like them because they're simple and like nothing I've got already so they're memorable and I'll always smile when I see them as they're a nice personally-chosen birthday gift :)
We then went off to a Brazilian restaurant for dinner. It was amazing, an all-you-can-eat buffet for £20 which also includes waiters coming to your table every five or so minutes to carve a different cut of meat for your plate. They give you a little card for your table - you show the red side if you don't want any meat for the moment, and the green side if you want to the meat to keep on coming. It was heaven, Anthony loved it even more because they were showing Germany's World Cup game on screens while we were there :) We also had delicious pudding, I chose chocolate mousse and loved it. Then it was onto a lovely London to see Les Miserables performed live. I've always loved that show because my parents do and they used to play the soundtrack in the family car on long car journeys so we learned the songs and story from a young age. I'd never seen it performed professionally...until now, thanks to Anthony arranging it all as a present :)
Me at the Queen's Theatre, before the curtain went up for the first half of the show. There's the famous Les Mis picture of the character Cosette, used to represent the show the world over.
The show was amazing, as powerful and moving as I've always known it to be. All the actors were great and the staging was so clever and detailed and inventive. I was swept away and adored it. Yes, it's a melodrama, of course it is, in that period of history everything's intense and world-changing. I'd advise everyone to see the show performed live in a theatre if they can. Anthony was laughing because during the interval he overheard a lady say to her friend 'oh it's quite complicated so if you hadn't seen the film you wouldn't know what was going on!' *headdesk*.
The only slight blip over my birthday weekend was the fact that we got back on Saturday to find that our TV wouldn't work. We tried changing the fuse in the plug but it still wouldn't show any signs of life. We know the socket works because we tested it so we nipped into town and bought a new TV because our old one isn't made anymore. Of course once we got home, we found it'd only pick up the BBC's channels, because during the bad weather here earlier this year, our exterior aerial got knocked about and for a while, wouldn't pick up a few channels. That had ceased to happen though so we weren't expecting this problem with our new TV. A friend of ours is a person who works with TV aerials for a living and he said it shouldn't be a difficult thing to fix. We'll have to call someone in though because we're a few floors up in our flat and the aerial is attached to the wall outside our window so is rather difficult to get to. God willing, we can call someone out soon to fix it. Luckily, the main TV channels all have online catch-up services like iplayer so we can watch things on them live or later, we're not as cut-off as we might have been several years ago.
Today, Anthony baked me a birthday cake. It's chocolate with white chocolate chips and a white chocolate 30 on top. He got very cross baking it as it wasn't done in the oven as quickly as it should have been and I got antsy because I wanted my lunch and he quite rightly noted I wasn't being very grateful when he was doing a nice thing for me. He doesn't do much baking as it's not something he feels he's very good at so my attitude probably didn't help. Thankfully we made up, we rarely properly argue like that because life's too short and when we do argue like that, we don't let ourselves fester for too long in the aftermath. Grudges and resentment are never a good idea, especially within marriage.
The cake was delicious by the way. Soft and chocolately and really yummy. He did a great job :) He turned the light off in our bedroom when I was writing and came in singing 'Happy Birthday' with a lit candle stuck in the cake. It made me smile as I blew out the candle, then we cut into the cake and devoured a slice each. My husband is thoughtful and talented, I must remember to treat him better in such situations and not take my low blood-sugar out on him. Sometimes I want the whole world to stick to the schedule that I have in my head and then I get mad when it doesn't, the world isn't like that and I have to remember that and react better when it doesn't run on my schedule :S Thankfully my husband understands me and forgives, I'm very lucky and it's a reminder to me of how much I love him ;) Thanks to him, I had an awesome birthday.
We then went off to a Brazilian restaurant for dinner. It was amazing, an all-you-can-eat buffet for £20 which also includes waiters coming to your table every five or so minutes to carve a different cut of meat for your plate. They give you a little card for your table - you show the red side if you don't want any meat for the moment, and the green side if you want to the meat to keep on coming. It was heaven, Anthony loved it even more because they were showing Germany's World Cup game on screens while we were there :) We also had delicious pudding, I chose chocolate mousse and loved it. Then it was onto a lovely London to see Les Miserables performed live. I've always loved that show because my parents do and they used to play the soundtrack in the family car on long car journeys so we learned the songs and story from a young age. I'd never seen it performed professionally...until now, thanks to Anthony arranging it all as a present :)
Me at the Queen's Theatre, before the curtain went up for the first half of the show. There's the famous Les Mis picture of the character Cosette, used to represent the show the world over.
The show was amazing, as powerful and moving as I've always known it to be. All the actors were great and the staging was so clever and detailed and inventive. I was swept away and adored it. Yes, it's a melodrama, of course it is, in that period of history everything's intense and world-changing. I'd advise everyone to see the show performed live in a theatre if they can. Anthony was laughing because during the interval he overheard a lady say to her friend 'oh it's quite complicated so if you hadn't seen the film you wouldn't know what was going on!' *headdesk*.
The only slight blip over my birthday weekend was the fact that we got back on Saturday to find that our TV wouldn't work. We tried changing the fuse in the plug but it still wouldn't show any signs of life. We know the socket works because we tested it so we nipped into town and bought a new TV because our old one isn't made anymore. Of course once we got home, we found it'd only pick up the BBC's channels, because during the bad weather here earlier this year, our exterior aerial got knocked about and for a while, wouldn't pick up a few channels. That had ceased to happen though so we weren't expecting this problem with our new TV. A friend of ours is a person who works with TV aerials for a living and he said it shouldn't be a difficult thing to fix. We'll have to call someone in though because we're a few floors up in our flat and the aerial is attached to the wall outside our window so is rather difficult to get to. God willing, we can call someone out soon to fix it. Luckily, the main TV channels all have online catch-up services like iplayer so we can watch things on them live or later, we're not as cut-off as we might have been several years ago.
Today, Anthony baked me a birthday cake. It's chocolate with white chocolate chips and a white chocolate 30 on top. He got very cross baking it as it wasn't done in the oven as quickly as it should have been and I got antsy because I wanted my lunch and he quite rightly noted I wasn't being very grateful when he was doing a nice thing for me. He doesn't do much baking as it's not something he feels he's very good at so my attitude probably didn't help. Thankfully we made up, we rarely properly argue like that because life's too short and when we do argue like that, we don't let ourselves fester for too long in the aftermath. Grudges and resentment are never a good idea, especially within marriage.
The cake was delicious by the way. Soft and chocolately and really yummy. He did a great job :) He turned the light off in our bedroom when I was writing and came in singing 'Happy Birthday' with a lit candle stuck in the cake. It made me smile as I blew out the candle, then we cut into the cake and devoured a slice each. My husband is thoughtful and talented, I must remember to treat him better in such situations and not take my low blood-sugar out on him. Sometimes I want the whole world to stick to the schedule that I have in my head and then I get mad when it doesn't, the world isn't like that and I have to remember that and react better when it doesn't run on my schedule :S Thankfully my husband understands me and forgives, I'm very lucky and it's a reminder to me of how much I love him ;) Thanks to him, I had an awesome birthday.