• 7:00 a.m.— Woke to a gorgeous, sunny day, and my husband wearing my favorite outfit of his (his brown flat-front pants and light cotton blue-and-white striped shirt that's just dressy enough for work). He picked it out all by himself and everything. As he discovered that I was awake, he got back in bed and sang "Happy Birthday" to me.
• 7:30 a.m.— Got ready for school, then walked excitedly to the dining room so I could open the card Lauren sent me. I got a few early presents and cards, but hers was the only one that told me specifically to wait, so I had opened all the others this weekend to stretch out my birthday as long as possible.
• 8:00 a.m.— Drove to school while eating my favorite breakfast, a Powerbar Harvest (double chocolate) and a bottled Frappucino. Sugar much?
• 8:30-9:30 a.m.— Sat through freshman class, where I got to hear parts of Ives' fantastic "Concord" piano sonata. A recording of this piece is definitely going on my Amazon wish list.
• 9:35 a.m.— Checked voice mail, consisting of my mom and her AP class singing "Happy Birthday" to me. Too funny. I called her back to find out who had been singing with her, but she was still teaching, so we didn't talk for very long.
• 10:00-11:00 a.m.— Worked out for the first time in a week and a half, which felt great. In the first 25.5 years of my life, a week and a half without working out would have been such the norm, but I've been so good about it this semester. During my nutty last week, though, my gym time slots were taken up by other activities, so I was happy to get back there today.
• 10:30 a.m.— Discovered a new melodic line in "Enid," one of my fave BNL songs.
• 11:30 a.m.— Came home, enjoyed my leftover taco from Taco Bell (they made us extra food by mistake last night), and watched a halfway-interesting episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on Spike.
• 12:00 p.m.— Checked email and found many birthday messages and e-cards. Thanks to everyone who thought of me, especially since I'm so bad about keeping on top of birthdays!
• 1:00 p.m.— Putzed around the house, played games online, read a bit of research for my paper due next week, and finally took a shower.
• 2:30 p.m.— Checked voice mail, consisting of Jack's mom singing "Happy Birthday" to me.
• 4:30-5:30 p.m.— Went to worship committee meeting at church.
• 5:35 p.m.— Checked voice mail, consisting of Lauren singing "Happy Birthday" to me. I love it when people sing to me, and apparently, word has gotten out.
• 6:00 p.m.— Arrived home to find Jack still mixing ingredients for my birthday cake. I knew he'd be making it this afternoon, but I thought he would have finished mixing things and had it almost done baking by then. Since the cake was taking longer than planned, we decided to scrap plans of going out to eat (we wouldn't have left the house until almost 8 p.m.), and instead, Jack went to get take-out from P.F. Chang's, while I waited at home to take my cake out of the oven. We had a lot of fun looking at their menu online, because we had never been there and were astonished by the number of vegetarian things on the menu; they're even marked with a special icon! It was very exciting.

And now, I'm still waiting for Jack to return with our yummy Chinese dinner so that we can watch 24, top off our dinner with some yummy chocolate pound cake, and enjoy the last few hours of my birthday. Birthdays can be regular days like this one, and they're still perfect, because I'm spending time with my husband and feeling the love of friends and family. Who needs a party?

Labels: eating out, getting older, kitchen adventures, music

• posted by erica 5/01/2006 07:41:00 PM
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