At least Madeleine Albright isn't in my bed.
You know, there's a term for people like me: spoiled rotten. If I'm not careful, I'm going to start expecting that every day be as full of kind words, goofy phone calls, decadent food, and general indulgence as yesterday was. What I'm trying to say, here, is that I had an excellent birthday, definitely the top of the adult-birthday heap so far. Many thanks to the sweetest flist around: you guys mean a lot to me, and I'm so glad I've gotten to know each and every one of you.
In the vortex known as "the real world," I got practically no work done, thanks to work friends who were determined to keep me distracted and having a good time, and then plied me with a beautiful Berkeley day and some seriously strong ceviche at lunchtime. In the middle of the afternoon, my mom's new third-grade class called to sing me a deafening rendition of "Happy Birthday," which I'm fairly certain the entire office heard through my cell phone. After work, I zipped over to Shoe Pavilion and bought myself a little birthday gift in the form of grown-up shoes: pointy and black, with kitten heels (more work-friendly than party-girl shoe-whore, but still: big-girl shoes!), then ran home and promptly tore my closet apart, looking for something properly birthday-worthy to wear out. I'm allowed to be a tiny bit vain on my birthday, especially if nobody else has to witness the sartorial carnage.
My friends had made plans with me for a semi-surprise birthday dinner, and it was truly excellent. The city was all stereotypically San Francisco, with the fog rolling over the hills just as the sun went down, and they took me to a really beautiful Basque restaurant on Battery street. We shared a bottle of red wine that smelled like cherries and brown sugar, asked the waitress a million questions about the menu (to be fair, many of the ingredients were listed under their Basque names, which...is less than helpful), ate some extremely tasty food, and generally had a good time. Afterwards, we decided to ditch out on the fancy-schmancy desserts and headed over to Ghirardelli Square for ice cream the way ice cream is meant to be done, and I must say that it's been entirely too long since I've gone for a late-night cookies-and-cream sundae with homemade hot fudge. Yum.
And I haven't even done the family-dinner-with-presents part yet; that's tonight, followed by a three-day weekend that I can only assume is in honor of my birth. Right? Labor movement, schlabor schmoveshchment.
Spoiled. But grateful.
In the vortex known as "the real world," I got practically no work done, thanks to work friends who were determined to keep me distracted and having a good time, and then plied me with a beautiful Berkeley day and some seriously strong ceviche at lunchtime. In the middle of the afternoon, my mom's new third-grade class called to sing me a deafening rendition of "Happy Birthday," which I'm fairly certain the entire office heard through my cell phone. After work, I zipped over to Shoe Pavilion and bought myself a little birthday gift in the form of grown-up shoes: pointy and black, with kitten heels (more work-friendly than party-girl shoe-whore, but still: big-girl shoes!), then ran home and promptly tore my closet apart, looking for something properly birthday-worthy to wear out. I'm allowed to be a tiny bit vain on my birthday, especially if nobody else has to witness the sartorial carnage.
My friends had made plans with me for a semi-surprise birthday dinner, and it was truly excellent. The city was all stereotypically San Francisco, with the fog rolling over the hills just as the sun went down, and they took me to a really beautiful Basque restaurant on Battery street. We shared a bottle of red wine that smelled like cherries and brown sugar, asked the waitress a million questions about the menu (to be fair, many of the ingredients were listed under their Basque names, which...is less than helpful), ate some extremely tasty food, and generally had a good time. Afterwards, we decided to ditch out on the fancy-schmancy desserts and headed over to Ghirardelli Square for ice cream the way ice cream is meant to be done, and I must say that it's been entirely too long since I've gone for a late-night cookies-and-cream sundae with homemade hot fudge. Yum.
And I haven't even done the family-dinner-with-presents part yet; that's tonight, followed by a three-day weekend that I can only assume is in honor of my birth. Right? Labor movement, schlabor schmoveshchment.
Spoiled. But grateful.