April 27, 2003
My Birthday Weekend
I'm turning 32 tomorrow! Or, as we say around here, 100000 (which is significant, because today is the last day I am 11111 years old, in binary.)
We didn't have a big party this year because Gary thought he might have to work on the weekends in April. So instead he took me birthday present shopping yesterday, and today we invited a few friends over for lunch.
The shopping started as a trip to Palo Alto to retrieve my car (I had left it at Crystal D over night after Deborah's party.) We went to Stanford Mall for lunch (they have a great hotdog grill) and Gary bought me some clothes (entirely to my surprise...I had planned on getting everything myself, but he insisted. But I can't wear any of it until tomorrow.) I asked for headphones for my birthday, so we thought we'd look for some places to try them out. As it turned out, he wound up buying them online, as the local place was nearly twice as expensive.
Last night in preparation for today's mini-party, we made chocolate-chip oatmeal cookies. This turned into quite an ordeal. It cost us 4 sticks of butter and a chopstick! Luckily Gary didn't do permanent damage to his thumb. While the cookies were baking we watched the Osbournes, which we both decided was the stupidest thing we'd ever seen. I can almost see why people like it, since it's so stupid as to be unbelievable. It's hard to know how much of it is acting and how much is real (I mean, these people couldn't wipe up a spill on the stove!) I feel I've seen enough to hold an intelligent conversation about the show, if that's even possible.
The lunch party was a totally last-minute affair. I wanted to do something, but inviting a dozen people over was just not in the picture. John and Eva and their two sons, Derek and Max, came over, as did Vladimir and Cornelia and their 6 month old daughter Thea. I gave Thea the strawberry cap I knitted for her a couple of weeks ago. She seemed to like it, and since Cornelia ate so many strawberries during her pregnancy, it was a fitting gift.
The party was lots of fun. We had an antipasto salad, an orzo salad, steak and porkchops, and grilled marinated veggies. Luckily the weather held out for us (it's been raining on and off all week) and we could grill outside. John and Eva brought a bottle of Wente merlot, and we opened the bottle of Andretti cab that we got last weekend (a little too soon, we decided.) And for dessert we had a raspberry chiffon cake, ice cream, fruit, and the aforementioned cookies. Yum! Gary used 6 candles on the cake, but it took a long time before any of our guests could figure out he had marked out 32 in binary.
Derek played Connect Four against most of the adults, with Max occassionally helping place a checker in the holder. We watched and talked about Thea a lot. She can now stay sitting up by herself for quite a long time, and can roll onto her stomach. The boys played with her a little bit, making funny faces and noises for her. She laughed really loudly over and over again, giving the kind of terrific instant gratification little kids don't usually get from adults.
I got a Zen Art palatte from Vladimiar and Cornelia. You can "paint" on the paper with water, and the characters disappear after a couple of minutes. I took Chinese calligraphy in college, and I'll have to do some practicing now. I can't even remember how to write my own name in Chinese (how embarrassing!) I got some beautiful flowers and a few great cards from John and Eva and each of the kids (Derek wrote it out himself; he writes the letter J exactly the way I did when I was his age.)
Eventually all the kids got tired, or messy, or fussy, so we said our goodbyes. Gary took a nap, I cleared off the table, and now it's getting dark. Now all I need to decide is whether to have cake or cookies for dinner. :)
Posted by Jen at April 27, 2003 06:52 PM