birthday blah...

I love my birthday. I don't understand why everyone doesn't love celebrating their birthday as much as I do. It's a day (week or month, even!!!) to celebrate yourself! My birthday has always been a big to-do for me. I had my first birthday in Singapore and can remember years that I had parties at Chuck E. Cheese, always eating one of my favorite meals, and fancy cakes for as long as I can remember.

For my ninth birthday, I decided it wasn't fair that I couldn't have a pool party, so I had people come over to my house in their bathing suits - yes, in FEBRUARY! I was a crazy, crazy kid and I guess my mom decided not to fight the battle against that bright idea. I received two or three New Kids on the Block dolls that year.

The year after that, I got my first hamster! It was probably one of the most exciting surprises to come home and find a hamster cage sitting in the living room. I was however, less than enthused with the rip-off "Margie" doll I received from an aunt later that evening.

Anyway, as I've gotten older, birthdays have become a time to gather with my closest friends. And though they don't all like each other (no exclusive SATC crew here), it's a time when none of that matters and they just want to eat, drink and be merry with me. I'd like to think they enjoy the antics of drunk HT.

On my birthday this year, I went to lunch with co-workers and then had dinner with J, who flew in for the weekend. It was all in all a good day and I had high expectations for the weekend, mainly for Friday, a day that I had planned almost hour by hour.

The activities that I had planned for the day were scrapped because the recruiting event that I was at ran a little longer than anticipated, my feet hurt, and it was a bit blusterier than anticipated (I got to do them on Sunday, though!). I still held high hopes for dinner. I wanted to try a new restaurant in DC. When dinner plans kind of fell through, J decided to get in contact with his friends and make new dinner plans since he doesn't see his friends in DC that often. With dinner plans scrapped, somehow, there was a miscommunication and post-dinner plans were taken off the plate too. I don't want to go into detail about what was done instead because that might worthy of another blog, but I'll just say, it wasn't fun.

Well, my official "birthday party" is this Saturday so I just hope that this event will be better than what ensued last Friday. Plans include Roy Roger's fried chicken and karaoke. A few of my closest friends can't make it, so I'm a little disappointed, but it's not the end of the world. We just won't be friends anymore. Hahaha... just kidding!

So yeah, birthdays = big deal. Don't forget it!

Getting Old...

Some of you may know that I had a birthday recently, but the passing of my youth actually became aware to me through an incident the day before my birthday. It was a lovely, sunshiney Wednesday, so I decided to take advantage of the warm weather and go rollerblading. I haven't rollerbladed in a long time, over a year even. Though, I was a bit unsteady at first, I thought nothing of it since I had just recently been ice-skating without injury. I rollerbladed down the street and steadily picked up speed. And more speed. More speed than I could handle. Who knew there was such a decline on this street? Certainly not the girl who's only been living here for a week and a half! Without properly thinking out a course of action, I did a weird turn and threw myself onto the ground. The momentum got the best of me and I scraped off a good chunk of my knee. And on top of that, I got a hole in my favorite workout pants and a lovely scrape on my elbow as well.

My wounds are still healing and every time I bend my knee or elbow, they open up just a little. I don't know when I'll build up the courage to go rollerblading again - I guess when I find somewhere REALLY, REALLY flat or until I find my elbow and knee pads. *tear* "Safety, first." That'll be my old woman mantra.