birthday in review

(originally posted on my blog at the original groupee.com social networking site.)

with a little forethought, i managed to celebrate my birthday every day from sunday - 1/6 through friday - 1/11 (albeit lightly, on some days). pretty clever, if i do say so myself. unfortunately, it seems old age has set in, because i can't for the life of me remember what i did monday or wednesday of that week... ah well - here's the rest of it for posterity's sake.

thursday, 3rd:
perhaps we started a little early, but it was all that would work with our schedules. visited matt's mom & sister for dinner & cake. discovered that my age no longer fits into 1 box of birthday candles, as my mother-in-law rummaged to find the 25th birthday candle.

sunday, 6th:
part 1: determined to locate the highly-sought-after cupkate, allie and i ventured into ballard to ruin our appetites and a do a little window shopping. no cupkates, had lavendar instead. bought a really fabulous hat.

part 2: dinner with family at a fabulous new thai place. we celebrated three birthdays - mom, aunt jodee and i. first time that's happened, i think. opened our presents together, blew out candles together, oohed and aahed over eachother's gifts. savoring a few of the last hours of jodee's visit, enjoying her company.

tuesday, 8th:
part 1: day off from work. met denise at the delicious new papersource in bellevue. went home and played in my studio. resisted the urge to straighten, tidy or clean anything.

part 2: picked matt up from work, who greeted me with starbucks and dark pink roses. yum. went to dinner at the melting pot, which is an event in itself. so fun.

thursday, 10th:
gift from dad arrived, for which i had been practically stalking the fedex guy. i was elated to find a new mobile hard drive, which will allow me to download photos directly from my memory cards for storage, without the use of my computer. great for traveling, which it seems i'll be doing a bit of this year.

friday, 11th:
there was this great restaurant in seattle - where i'd never had anything other than dessert, because it was served in the form of a 27 foot dessert buffet. i hadn't been there in a couple of years, but i drove by it a few months ago and thought "we should do that sometime". so i decided to have a birthday party with my friends there. made the invitations, had a 100% rsvp rate, and i was totally excited. due to a long day, i forgot to make a reservation for the 11 of us, so i was scrambling at 7:15 to find the phone number. our friends had just arrived to carpool down there, and we were still scarfing dinner. they called the make the reservation - but the line was disconnected. a little more research showed that this restaurant had closed, and was replaced by a restaurant that definitely did *not* have a 27 foot dessert buffet. bummer.

it took a few minutes to formulate the backup plan. my house was not clean enough for serious company, so we bumped the start time to 8:30, and called the guestlist. matt & mike were sent to hunt & gather (dessert) while allie, lani and i tidied, cleaned and decorated. white christmas lights were hung, miscellaneous ribbons were hung, candles were lit, coffee was made. we pulled it off. the rest of the party arrived just as the mighty hunters returned. the boys went out of their way to bring a true dessert buffet - fruit tart, 2 flavors of ice cream, frosted brownies, cheesecake sampler, tiramisu, a box of cupkates (at last!) from cupcake royale, and a special little chocolate "coffee cup" filled with mousse and decorated to look like a cappucino. our friends showed up with yet more dessert, and even after all 11 of us had had our fill, each went home with a box of leftovers. we were up late playing games, talking, laughing, taking pictures. in all honesty, plan B was better than plan A would've been, and my friends made me feel truly special.