Happy birthday to my wonderful, sweet, funny, brilliant, delightful husband. I love you!

Happy birthday to the lovely eponasr! I hope you're having fun!

Happy birthday to autographedcat AND hrmortcia! I'm fairly sure you're not twins separated at birth, but hey, anything's possible.

Tonight we took advantage of my mom's being back in town and hit not one but two friends' birthday parties. *groan* I have severely overeaten. And I haven't gotten much exercise this week--Monday night Aaron wanted to to go the Sonic Generator concert, so I, having just come off the entire Hop Shop weekend, stayed in with Z, and Wednesday it was just too damn cold to go out. So I'm feeling a bit sluggish just now. :P Hopefully tomorrow's dance lesson will put me back on track.

Without really thinking about the dates this weekend, I had volunteered to do photography for the local ECD group's dance event, Fandango. I showed up with the giant Canon Rebel XT, the little pocket Canon, and Aaron's video camera, and settled in to bag me some dancers.

The giant Rebel has an "action" setting for freezing motion and continuous shooting, but doesn't let me frame shots in the LCD screen--I have to look through the viewfinder. The little Canon has the LCD feature, so I can hold it up over my head to shoot, but lacks the fancy action setting. It was also handy for shooting short chunks of video when the battery on the video camera died. :P

The event took place in the gym at Morningside Baptist, where I'm accustomed to go contra dancing, so it was a familiar venue, and I had some ideas of what the lighting and angles would be like. I clambered up to the top of the bleachers and set up the tripod with the video camera, then thought, hm, I wish I could get up even higher...So I went upstairs to the room where they teach the beginners' contra lessons, and shot through the gallery windows overlooking the gym. The glass is none too clean, and I had to be tricky about the flash, but it was cool to be able to get overhead shots of the dance patterns.

Of course, 75% (if not more) of what I shot will be crap, but I bet I got at least a dozen good shots...Now to the editing, which should only take me...oh, about three months...

It was a strange way to spend my birthday, but it turned out to be fun.

Before it gets to be this weekend, I should write about last weekend.

Last Saturday morning I went back to the French conversation brunch in Dunwoody. This time I was one of the best speakers present, so I felt a warm little glow of happiness. Z was awake for this one, and I got to show him off. :)

Saturday night we went to an Addams Family themed birthday party. The request was that everyone dress as a member of the Addams Family (improv was expected), or "at least gothy." Last year I was pregnant for this event, and wasn't really in the spirit of the whole dressing up thing (yeah, imagine that!), so this year I made up for it by hauling out the spider costume I made for the Halloween parade in 2006, and going as the Widow Addams. ("How many husbands have you buried?" I was asked. "Oh, a lady never tells!") This one the prize for best costume, and now I have an entire season of Addams Family episodes on DVD to watch while I feed Z. His education is expanding!

This past weekend, Aaron and I had dinner at Dominick's Italian Restaurant, as part of justben's traditional birthday celebration. This marks not only justben's birthday but an historical occasion. Last year at this very same event, I ordered the divinely delicious Penne Casserole with Tiger Shrimp...and didn't really enjoy it. I mean, it tasted amazing, and I was aware that it did, but something, somehow, just didn't feel...right.

Turns out it wasn't the food that was off--it was me. The following day I had a private dance lesson and practically slept through the last half of it. That evening...I made this (now unlocked) private post.

An era begins...

My birthday sort of snuck up on me this year. Last year I had enough advance notice to plan a party, but this year...well, I wish someone had made an announcement, or something, y'know? Because every weekend this month is booked solid, and October's filling up too. And what with everything else going on, I kinda forgot.

I guess I should write some long, introspective thing about aging and life and changes and all that rubbish. But all I can manage is, holy shit, I'll be 35 tomorrow. Huh. 35. That's a lotta candles. Maybe I'm better off without a party.

My first paper-free weekend. How lovely. How peaceful. How nostalgic.

Friday night I went contra dancing. Saturday I spent lounging around and snuggling. Saturday night was justben's birthday party--which started out at the superb Dominick's Little Italy but ended up back at our place. (And boy, is our house great for parties.) Sunday I slept in, had a private lindy lesson, napped, and got caught up on laundry.

It was just about an ideal weekend.

I am not good at race games. I've never been very good at getting anyplace before anyone else, nor have I ever particularly wanted to. I'm not sure which is cause and which is effect, but there it is. The competition stresses me out. I blame lingering PTSD from middle school gym class.

May 1 was partytrick's birthday, and on May 5, she and skellington hosted a games night at their place to celebrate. The birthday girl's requirement was that we all play a round of Snorta!

"Both the player that set down the matching card and the player whose card they match must race to make the sound of the other player’s animal."

That's right...the children's game with the animal noises was too stressful for me. The competition proved too intense.

*is pathetic*

skellington's pictures from the birthday/graduation party here.

( Chocolate Raspberry Cake )

My, this was good. This was the first time I'd ever frosted a cake, and I made my own frosting! (For some reason this seems very impressive to me--don't know why.) :) The frosting tasted bitter to me on its own (I don't particularly care for bitter, dark chocolate), but on the cake it was perfect.

Pictures from rslatkin's birthday party/Anna's graduation party here.

I brought my laptop to Ester's yesterday to show her pictures of the birthday party. I thought she'd be amused by the castle cake. Of course, then I had to explain Twister.

She looked at the Twister pictures for a minute, then reached over for my water bottle. "Do you play the game...with the bottle, too?"

Here are the bulk of the party pictures; the rest are on my little Kodak and will hopefully be retrievable.

Thank you thank you to the whole mob of wonderful people who showed up for my birthday! We had about 20 people there, and a great spread of yummy things to eat.

The castle cake came out a bit crumblier than the first time around, but with suitable embellishments (including a Playmobil battering ram, and a Fisher Price dragon courtesy of spambrian and eponasr), it looked fantastic. Pictures will be up here as soon as I figure out how to get them off my camera (more on that later--the software on my old Kodak stopped working :P).

Note to self: don't play Twister without stretching first. Or else 34 is too old to play Twister...nah.

Before blowing out my candles, everyone exclaimed, "make a wish!" And I looked around and realized--I had everything in the world I could possibly wish for.

Whee! We're going to the beach! It's Alice's birthday, so we're kidnapping her for the weekend and taking her to Savannah. The plan is walking and shopping in town, and a pirate walking tour (hrmortcia, I knew you'd like that!), then driving out to Tybee on Saturday for beach time and a dolphon cruise. Aaron has to meet with some of his students from the GA Tech satellite campus, so this is technically a business trip, but I'm going to do my best to keep him from working too hard.

Bah. The weather report is for thunderstorms all weekend. Well, what do meteorologists know?

We took Aaron out to the Melting Pot for his birthday dinner. 35 years of him to love!

( Pictures behind cut. )

I feel like I've done nothing today but eat. That's life at a Jewish family gathering. First there was breakfast at the hotel (not part of the gathering, but worth mentioning). Then there was lunch. It was my mom (Claire)'s husband (Sid)'s 80th birthday, and she had invited his family (lots) and their friends (lots more) to a surprise luncheon party at a nearby hotel. Then there were hors d'oeuvres and snacks back at their place in the evening. So there was food.

There was also an entire family I had heard about for years but never met: kids, grandkids, siblings, nieces, nephews...and all of them think my mother is the best thing since latkes. Well, yeah, she is. And apparently she's been saying all kinds of nice things about me and Aaron, because all of these kids, grandkids, siblings, etc., were utterly thrilled to meet us. I mean, seriously, overwhelmingly happy. It was...pretty wonderful, really.

Socializing with a lot of new people is not necessarily my forte, so I was kind of trepidatious about all of this...for about the first five minutes. Then I was chatting happily away with everyone, and of course, eating. We met Sid's daughter Sibyll (the only family member I'd met before, but over 10 years ago) and her boyfriend Jeff at dinner last night, then today at lunch we met Sid's son Perry, his wife Lara, and their kids Samantha and Zachary (a very polite young man who asked me to say a few words to his grandpop for the commemorative video tape). Then, let's see, there was Sid's sister Ruth, her daughter Lynne and son-in-law Leon, and their twin daughters, Amy and Iris. Um, I think I've got all the family members...I was telling Mom she should have provided a family tree to refer to.

There were also some of Mom and Sid's friends from Shul, and one of Sid's former students from Glassboro, and my mom's college friends Mary and Bill, who were witnesses at Sid and Mom's wedding. Those are only the people I remember talking to--I missed a few in the general hubub. There will shortly be many, many pictures.

(I should note that I didn't blow my newfound healthy eating habits entirely--I swam 18 laps at the hotel pool. Since the pool is about 3/4 the size of the one at the Y at home, I figure that counts for about 14 "real" laps.)

(I realized a little while ago that the reason I'd been feeling a bit nervous about meeting everyone was that my idea of a large Jewish family came from Becki's. And, well. Suffice to say, Sid's family is a whole different kettle of fish of another color. Wow.)

Tomorrow we're going to the Purim festival at Shul with Mom and Sid. This will be my first actual experience of any kind of anything in a synagogue. Oh, and we're being picked up at 9:45 am, so I'd better quit posting and get some sleep.

I just had to share the hilarious eCard that hrmortcia sent me for my birthday.

 

This is vain, especially since it will be preserved in the archives, but I couldn't resist retaining for myself this lovely Birthday Tixie posting from Susan on the Bujold list:

The Birthday Tixie arrives on the scene, only a bit flustered from
her goof on the more senior Birthday Tixie assitant's birthday. Attila
Fekete is curled around her neck like a fur collar, nibbling every
once in a while on Tixie hair.

The apron pocket rustles, but instead of a cheat sheet, it is a packet
of pictures of listee gatherings. Smiling, she spends a bit of time
perusing them, then scritches the jade eyed cat. "Ooh, these all look
like so much fun, she's good with her camera."

"Ati, Lady Isabeau has several collections of pictures of listee
gatherings listed here http://www.dendarii.com/frames/index.html,
including the Dragon Con World Con pity Party of 2002. She's
interested in the writings of David Eddings, and I found Damien X
quotes her rather regularly. Hmmmm. Maybe a birthday gift in there
for someone's 32nd birthday? Nah, wouldn't be proper."

A puff of Tixie Dust, a wriggle of Tixie Wings, a wave of the Tixie
wand, and the photos fan out for all the listees to see, hanging in
the air, Joy/Isabeau's favorite beverage in the Tixie goblet, raised
in a toast.

"To Lady Isabeau aka Joy W, may your 32nd birthday find you with lots
of nice comments again about all your wonderful listee pictures, may
all of your favorite authors favor you with new books this year, and
may your bank account have more than enough for you to gather them
to you without risking anything on the homefront. Happy 32nd Birthday
Joy/Lady Isabeau!"