I haven’t yet updated the blog on how my birthday went with Josh, or the subsequent birthday lunch with Lisa and Allison.
When my birthday rolled around, as I’ve mentioned before I went out to have breakfast with my parents and came back to watch Steve Jobs’ keynote at WWDC. Since Josh had to work that day we just planned on having dinner somewhere and that was about it. The only hard part of the day was seeing my b-day gifts in the apartment and wondering what they were.
We went to dinner at Maggiano’s at Lincoln Square… it was actually quite good. I had kind of dressed up for the occasion wearing one of my skirts and some of my Chanel Chance perfume, and Josh was wearing his kilt and a dress shirt. For the appetizer we picked one off of the Make-A-Wish menu, which was toasted garlic bread baguette with goat cheese, sun dried tomatoes, basil, and a balsamic vinaigrette all over it. Mmm.
For dinner Josh had a seafood linguine type thing which was excellent, while I had a lobster ravioli with lobster cream sauce. You heard that right, and oh boy was it delicious. Dessert was even more exciting… the featured dessert on the Make-A-Wish menu was a berry tiramisu. Now, I love tiramisu in general, but it’s particularly rich, so seeing a berry version was quite intriguing to say the least. The portion turned out to be gigantic (which was great since we were sharing), and had blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries inside it. It really made the whole dessert much more light. Of course on the side was a light berry sauce and a pile of blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries. Yum!
After we finished dinner Josh asked me if there was anything else that I wanted to do, and since there weren’t any good movies playing at Lincoln Square I suggested that we head over to the mall and wander around. I kind of wanted to look at dresses, just because it’s fun and because it’ll be officially summer soon. Of course, after a bit of wandering around I find something that I really liked and showed it to Josh… he thought it was really cute as well! And since it was my birthday… Josh was a sweetheart and bought it for me. -grin-
Once we’d finished dress shopping Josh asked if we could go and look at the men’s section to check out some button-up shirts. He’d always been interested in wearing them with his kilt, but never really thought that they would look right; consequently I spent a good 20mins convincing him to even try one on, and that they’d look fine. Once he did though, he actually started to like them a bit more and realize that the length of the shirts wouldn’t look that bad. Then of course we found two shirts on sale that are a dark grey-blue. Very nice. I even convinced him to buy a size that fit him! He’s so used to buying the XL size because he doesn’t want a tight shirt, but I was of the opinion that they looked a bit too “baggy”, so we’ll see how he likes the smaller size in the long run.
Once we’d picked out the shirts we just headed back to the apartment to open my gifts. Here’s what I got:
- Nintendo DS Lite (White)
- Wolfenstein (GBA game playable on the DS)
- Our already-owned copy of Mario Kart
Josh went to all the Game Stop stores in the area and couldn’t find a used or new copy of Mario Kart, so he figured that the next best thing would be to give our copy to me so that I could wipe it and start from the beginning again, entering my name in the card and all that. I did end up asking him if he’d checked Toys ‘R’ Us, since they often have a surplus of that kind of thing (gamers don’t usually think to check there), and he admitted that he hadn’t thought of that. So when an hour later he says to me, “I’ll be right back” and leaves the apartment, I could already imagine what he was doing.
Turns out I was right, and he shows up a few minutes later with Mario Kart in hand. We’ve been playing together ever since… thanks honey! (It’s so much more fun when you each have a copy of the game since you’re not restricted to playing on certain courses).
So all in all I had a really nice birthday. Since we’d (Lisa, Josh and I) had taken Allison out for dinner on her birthday, we’d kind of agreed that we’d all go out to lunch/dinner again since my birthday was coming up. We ended up waiting until the end of the week so that Lisa could be there, and went to Pickles deli on the island in Clinton. It’s a new joint at Ken’s Korner that my sister said was really good. It was.
Josh and I were already on the island that day helping my parents clean out the basement a bit and sort through all the massive piles of junk that are down there. I had a few personal goals, or reasons for helping out. For one, I didn’t want anything of mine to be thrown away that I didn’t already want tossed, and for two I wanted to find some of the stuff that I didn’t want tossed… it’s a huge mess down there. We managed to go through all the clothing and I ended up with a big black garbage bag full of clothes that we’d stuffed downstairs during the remodel that I hadn’t been able to find again. The only problem with this is that I have now effectively doubled the clothing that I have at the apartment and I’m already bursting at the seams… it’s still sitting in its black garbage bag.
My mom also managed to find the big fishbowl she kept Hank her betta fish in, something I’ve had my eye on for awhile. Since our apartment is so small, I figured that it’d be fun to have a betta fish but didn’t want to buy all the “equipment” over again when I knew it was sitting somewhere in that basement.
Apparently it was a good thing that Josh and I offered to help, because my mom was genuinely overwhelmed with the project. She was kind of like a deer-in-the-headlights about the whole affair, and it took a few minutes to convince her that the “orders” I was giving her should be followed through just so that we could get started somewhere. It all worked out in the end, and now she’s on a cleaning spree down there and I hear she’s cleaned up maybe a 1/5th of it herself already. Woo!
So that was our project for the day… we planned to be there for the day and steal away just to have lunch with Lisa and Allison. Unfortunately that took longer than expected, because it’d been awhile since we’d all been together… so lunch took and hour, then we went to Langley and went to Tricia’s mom’s yard sale so Allison could find some art for her Philly apartment (I found some wax beads to put in bowls with wicks and use as candles, along with a Mardi Gras mask and some lavender oil). Then it was off to Good Cheer to check out the thrift store items, and then to Mike’s Place to get some ice cream.
At Good Cheer it was fun, because I found another sweater to rip out for just $3 (from the gap, pastel green and very soft), and we found some really cute old books for Allison to get. One was Latin For Beginners from the 1909, and the other was a little thin spelling book for 1st-3rd graders, made in 1895-ish. So very cute… I told Allison that she almost had to get it seeing as she was going for an Education degree. She thought it was wonderful.
At Mike’s Place I got some blackberry ice cream and Allison was kind enough to buy mine for me.
The only “bad” thing about the day was that I felt bad for Josh while we were gallivanting around. On the one hand I wanted to give my friends some time just to hang out with me, because I’m always with Josh these days… I kind of got very, very subtle clues sometimes that it’d be nice. On the other hand I always want Josh to be there, and I don’t want him to feel bad because he “can’t come”. It was okay in the end, but he did have to wait around for a very long time for us so I hope to make it up to him this weekend by having a somewhat-impromptu “Josh Day”.
That’s kind of the update for my birthday activities. Fun times all around. I talked to my mom about coming back to the island this Sunday to help out more with the basement, but that would mean we’d be there two weekends in a row (along with not really having a day off on the weekend) so I don’t want to push the issue with Josh. I want to give him a nice day off whenever he wants it, you know?
Right now I’m typing this at Tully’s across the street from the apartment with a grande iced vanilla latté to enjoy, along with a blueberry muffin. Mmm… muffins.