Monday, September 12, 2011

i wish i knew another way, but we're gonna have to clone you

My birthday is almost over. If you had talked to me this morning I would have said that I couldn't wait, since I was in a truly foul mood when I awoke (the spins always do that to me, and my hangover was compounded by incessantly mournful 9/11 coverage that made me want to stab myself in the face). But after the events of this evening, all is well with the world again, my faith is restored, and I think I'm ready to face my thirties with happiness (or, at least, fairly positive resignation).

So as I said, I awoke with a hangover (deserved), with birthday confetti all over the floor and too much alcohol-induced dizziness to do much about it. The hangover led me to try sitting quietly in one place as a cure, but I should have gone downstairs and watched something/anything mindnumbing rather than reading 9/11 coverage online. The mistake was made, however, and as a result I was less excited about my birthday than I ever have been in my entire life (the original 9/11 included, since I at least had eight hours of that day before I heard about the towers, even though I slept through most of that time). But, I rallied and dragged myself downstairs, where I opened the cards and presents I'd been stockpiling for the last couple of days. My parents sent me two cards (one funny, one maudlin with glitter - my favorite things!), my brother sent me a hilarious handmade card, and my mom's sister sent me a card as well. And I opened the presents from my parents; they got me two Barefoot Contessa cookbooks (I *adore* her and have never been failed by one of her recipes), an awesome cookbook/bible about breadmaking, and a microplane cheese grater since I was v. jealous of Adit and Priyanka's cheese grater when I helped them cook dinner at their place a few weeks ago. The presents were all individually wrapped so that it was even more exciting, if it's possible to feel excitement when one is sitting alone in her apartment during a national day of mourning.

But I will stop being melodramatic. Even though I wanted to cook to make people happy, and even though there are now a ton of Barefoot Contessa recipes I want to try, I decided that I would order pizza for dinner tonight so that I wouldn't have to slave away over cooking, serving, and doing dishes on my birthday. So there wasn't much that I needed to get ready, although I did tidy up a bit, get out extra chairs from the storage closet, etc. I also baked my own cake -- funfetti cake with rainbow chip frosting, which somehow manages to taste so danged good even though it's probably mostly chemicals. I baked it in two round pans and frosted it as a layer cake, perched atop the pedestal cake plate I got from my aunt's wedding, and it was awesome if I do say so myself. I also panicked at the last minute and ran to the corner store to get some appetizer type stuff, which may not have been wholly necessary but was certainly better than everyone sitting around awkwardly waiting for the pizza to arrive.

However, there was v. little awkwardness (and what awkwardness there was was awesome and hilarious, particularly since I thrive on awkward situations). John and Jess were the first to arrive, and we spent a few glorious minutes up on the roof deck before other people started trickling in. Katrina was the next to arrive, followed shortly by Nathan and Lauren (aka Subz, my friend who bridges the googler expat circle and the Stanford group with me), who brought a bottle of wine and a dozen roses (yay). Chris Boyd got horribly stuck in traffic, but got there eventually, and we all had a v. v. lovely evening -- and we even had a lovely evening after Adit showed up three hours late, so it was all good The pizza was a success, and since one of my goals for this year (more on that in a moment) is to be kinder to myself about not meeting every single goal and accept that I can't please everyone, ordering pizza instead of cooking was the way to go.

There were so many great memories from dinner that I can't record them all, but suffice it to say that the group was well balanced and quite entertaining. The one memory I will share is of Lauren and Nathan grilling me on my favorite memories from this year and my goals and plans for next year, which is a surprisingly intimidating question that they pull out in every party they go to. And now I really should go to bed; Alyssa awaits, followed by lunch plans, followed by some serious writing timeline. Goodnight!

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