happy birthday, me!

I’ve been having a wonderful, prolonged birthday celebration, which started this Saturday with a visit from Laura and Brad. The four of us played 9 holes at the famed Capital Hills—my first round of golf ever!—and I had a great time. The weather was gorgeous, if a bit hot, and the course was beautiful. I learned that golf has lots of strange little rules—like don’t walk across somebody’s “line” on the putting green or you might mess up the grass (??) and don’t yell “look, a deer!” or some other non sequitor when someone’s mid-swing (um, sorry, Laura...and Brad...and Dan...!). Anyway, I think I would actually like to play again! (Although that doesn’t mean I want to play weekly, either, DAN.)

When we got back from golf, Laura and I put ourselves almost immediately to work making a birthday dinner and very labor intensive crepe cake. We cooked almost 20 crepes, made a complicated pastry cream that we thought we ruined but somehow magically came together, whipped cream, and assembled the whole thing. Kendra and Ryan came over to join us for what became the first annual “bone and pone” night (or the much-less-melodic "chicken and corn pudding" night). We had a fun and rowdy time, and kept Kendra up much too late for her 12 mile training run the next morning. I think bone&pone needs to be an annual tradition, and I promise to maybe de-bone the chicken next year so nobody chokes again (not that I’m admitting any liability, Ryan…!).

The birthday celebration continued last night with a gigantic free margarita from Bombers bar, which Kendra and I easily—though a bit awkwardly (we had to practically stand up to get our straws into it!)—put away. It’s been a really fun couple of days… seems promising for a good 26th year!