Written by Happy Birthday to me, or at least, as of two days ago. As of Friday I could no longer trust myself as I passed my 30th birthday, if you believe the generation that came into adulthood in the 60′s and is now in their 60′s themselves. So what do they do? Do they trust anyone? I’ve always wondered that.
My birthday was very low-key this year, partially because I like it that way and partially because my thunder was stolen by Hanne, who found out she passed the bar. Turning 30? Congratulations, people say, but in reality they’re thinking “What did you do? Survive another year?” Hanne, on the other hand, accomplished something extremely difficult. So yeah, when we went out Friday evening we told people we were both celebrating, but in reality it was really her evening. I have a birthday every year and this one just happened to have a zero as one of the digits that somehow makes it arbitrarily more special, but Hanne worked her ass off and discovered that she now gets to start the rest of her life, or at least continue working.
She’s been sighing and smiling a lot this weekend. It’s a real load off her mind, and she was almost in full-on freakout mode in the days leading up to the results coming out. She was completely convinced that she wouldn’t pass, but everyone who knows her knew she’d pass. Given who she is, her academic performance thus far and passage rates for first-time takers, it would have been a statistical coup for her to fail. I told her before she knew that if she did fail she should go buy a lottery ticket to see if her avoidance of sure-thing statistics extended to that, but I thought later that she probably would have been hit by bus or something instead of winning the lottery.
So that was her success. Mine was surviving to get closer to the next marketing age bracket, and we both celebrated accordingly: lots of food, lots of drinks. Our first stop was Beaker & Flask, who’s food and drinks never fail to amaze me. We both had a couple of cocktails and were given complimentary glasses of champagne to celebrate with. Our waitress got a very nice tip. Our next stop was to Laurelhurst Market where we met Dan and Kristine for dinner. LM is run by the same people who run the always delicious Simpatica catering company, which is on the shortlist of our wedding caterers, and they have a reputation of having excellent meat. After an whetting the appetite hour wait, I can safely say that their reputation is well-earned and we will be returning there at a future date to be determined.
Since law students were celebrating all over the city, we couldn’t help but to join one of the get-togethers with some of Hanne’s friends in order to raise a glass and toast to their successes, so our last stop of the evening found us at the Horse Brass, where after two cocktails, a glass of champagne, a pint of beer, 1/4 of a bottle of wine and a glass of sherry I somehow managed to down two Imperial pints of beer in short order and not yet be beyond the point of no return.
My newest obsession is Rock Band 2, which I picked up last weekend as a birthday present from me to me. I’m about a year late on this game and about two years late on the general concept introduced in the first Rock Band, but man, that game is ridiculously fun. Much like the Guitar Hero series of games where you have to “play” music by pressing buttons on a guitar that represent chords and simultaneously “strumming” another button, Rock Band introduces another guitar part so someone can play bass, plus a drum kit and a microphone for four player goodness. I’m settling into playing guitar nicely and Hanne is enjoying playing bass, but I’ve enjoyed singing if the situation calls for it. My drum kit was broken out of the box, though, so we can’t get a four-player band together until the replacement kit arrives.
Naturally, I’ve been taking every opportunity I can to tell people both how much I love playing the game as well as the nuances of the songs that are easy/difficult, how I’ve learned to use my pinky to press buttons but still can’t master one of the power chords and many other insignificant things that most people just don’t care about. I’m sure even Hanne, who plays with me on a regular basis, is probably tuning me out already, but then again, I think that extends to many other subjects anyway.
So as to not bore you, I’ll just leave you with these:
Behold, the band that Hanne and I created: Ladd’s Additions.
Hanne has now fully embraced the Dark Side as we went downtown today so she could buy herself an iPhone. We took the opportunity to combine our cell service and put ourselves on a Family Plan because let’s face it, we’re getting married next year. I think that worrying about how portable our numbers are and keeping them separate just in case is probably the least of things that we should be worried about. Plus, we save some money, which is always good.
Yesterday my family came over in order to celebrate my birthday, and Hanne and I decided to grill since the weather was excellent and probably won’t extend to too many more opportunities. Of course, among all the chaos we managed to forget that we’d grilled the corn, so it sat in the (turned off) oven all night and now we have seven cooked ears of corn to use up. Tonight will be a risotto that uses both blended and whole kernels of corn along with onion, and cherry tomatoes, and I’m thinking that we’ll have to get creative later this week. Personally, I think we should pick up some chips, beans, jalapenos and a few other things and make flat nachos like that bar down the street, so we’ll have to see how that goes.
Oooo, 5 PM. Time to crack open a beer and get cracking on dinner.
