birthday
Birthmeh
For most of my life I have gotten really excited about my birthday. I would sometimes have expectations that were too big to fill but for the most part I’ve always had a great time. As I got older, I started to feel that it was decidedly uncool to love your birthday like a child, so I learned to hide my excitement. I’m sure I didn’t do a very good job. My late 20′s have changed that. I’ve stopped caring about doing anything special and it felt like just another day, but at least another day with guaranteed chocolate cake. I still don’t hate or fear my birthday. I think I’ve done a pretty good job of dealing with aging. Maybe it’s because I look a lot younger than I am – something that used to bother me when I was younger but of course now is something I treasure. Maybe it’s also partially because of my child-like behaviour… Either way, I’m not sweating birthdays… yet.
I remember when I was a teenager I’d prepare the birthday wish list no less than 1 month in advance. Having a mid November birthday meant that all unfulfilled birthday wishlist items automatically became the Christmas wishlist. It was just efficient, I thought! Then I got to that point where I could buy myself whatever I wanted, and all the things I really wanted were way too expensive to ask of anyone. This never stops my mom for asking me what I want. It’s an interesting thing. As a kid I’d ask my mom what she wanted for mother’s day, birthday and Christmas and I’d rarely get a real answer. Every couple of years she would run down her old slippers or run out of perfume and those were easy… but other than that she mostly wanted nothing. How frustrating! Surely there’s something you’d want! Well, now I find myself in that position.
Last year when I turned 30 she bought me and Baron a return flight to NYC as our combined birthday gifts. It was perfect. I’d always wanted to go, flying is very convenient and this way I could force Baron to come with me. I loved it. I decided at that point that every birthday in my 30′s will yield a trip. Lavish, indulgent and maybe a bit much but that’s what is happening… Though I can save up and take these little weekend trips myself, and I could never ask someone to buy me that… so it doesn’t quite solve the problem of what my mother wants to give me.
Since I am taking myself to Chicago (my kinda town), I started to think of things I would want.
So far I have come up with this:
A chocolate covered caramel apple.
Birthday Yum
Failing that, I will gladly take an edible arrangement:
More Birthday Yums
There are a few other things I want like a cusinart food processor, a better blender and perhaps slight more fun, cooking classes. Those things can still get pretty pricey.
So apparently I want either: fruit dipped in chocolate, or things that will allow me to cook. Hrm. Can we say one-track-mind? I wouldn’t mind getting a wacom tablet, but it’s not a necessity. When I was younger it was so easy to make a list of things I wanted… now even the things I want seem slightly silly. Perhaps I’ve actually succeeded in becoming less materialistic. I’m totally fine to not buy things, to wait it out or at least save up for it.
All I really want on my birthday is this: to spend time with people I love and to have chocolate. Taking a trip to somewhere is really just the chocolate on the fruit. 
I wanna go to New York City cuz they tell me it’s the place to be
New York City has always been in my top places to visit. I’ve technically been there before; when I was about 1-2 years old my family made the trip. I of course remember nothing of this and so it’s like I’ve never been. The fact that I live in Toronto makes it even sillier that I’ve never been. I’ve been to Singapore. I’ve been to Vancouver. I’ve been to Chicago and Philadelphia… but somehow I never made the trip to NYC!
But finally I am going! This November I will be turning the big 3-0 and will be going to NYC that weekend. I’m so excited to fly Porter Airlines (I’m close to the island airport), and to be staying in mid-town Manhattan. I’ve accumulated a list of ‘must-see’ things from talking to friends and researching on the internet. I’m pretty good to go, but I obviously need one more thing to help me get there:
The NYC Playlist. This is crucial, a city as wonderful and large and old as NYC has probably a million songs written about it. I’m obviously going to start with Frank Sinatra’s “New York New York”, but I need to fill at least a 2.5 hour plane ride.
There was one song that I’ve had in my head for about the last 10 years whenever NYC was mentioned – but all I knew was the chorus, and when I tried googling that, I could never find it. but I finally did. The Song is New York City by the Demics, a 70′s Canadian Punk Band
This song is so wonderful! Any other suggestions for songs on the play list are welcome. I’m so excited I may just yell “No Sleep ’til Brooklyn” for the entire plane ride. That works too.
Happy Birthday To Me!
I’ve been negligent with writing but I blame this on my recently passed birthday. Speaking of birthdays, I wanted to show you somthing I found humourous and delightful!
You know when it’s your birthdy and you log into your email and/or facebook you get little happy birthday messages? Espcially from forums where you have to enter your date when you register. They are kind of cute!
Hello Minifig,
We at GameBattles would like to wish you a happy birthday today!
I’m pretty sure this is actually an option built into most forum software (send user birthday greeting? yes).
I think I got the BEST one from the least-expected sources: OSAP. OSAP is the Ontario student loans organization that I [unfortunately] owe money to. I logged in just to check my [nearly non-existent!] balance and noticed that I had “1 message(s) waiting” in my message centre. The message centre usually only tells me important facts such as: “The day your payment is due to come out falls on a Saturday, so funds will be taken out the following business day.” On this particular day, however it had this message, click on the image to see in a larger, readable size:
Thank
This is awesome for a few reasons:
- You don’t really exepct any sort of niceties from this type of service. It’s just something you do, like banking, and… well it is banking.
- There isn’t even an exclamation mark. It’s so matter of fact. It’s like they don’t know how to be joyous but they tried.
- The text above the message reads: “Please read the 1 message(s) below and take the appropriate actions, if required”. – What are the appropriate actions for happy birthday? Having a good time with friends that involves cake? If so then I did take the appropriate actions
It made my day though!
Another thing that made my day earlier this week was this awesome post on Buddyhead, a music blog:
posted by Travis Keller of Buddyhead.
Heavy Metal Fun Time Activity book (more product love.)
I’m pretty sure that I should be gifted this:
Heavy Metal Fun Time Activity Book
I am a bit of a fan of metal – not a huge fan… perhaps the camp and hilarity of metal appeals to me more (as I do love me some Metalocalypse). I do have a metal playlist on my iPod however – it’s decent. Regardless, this book is full of fun activities like colouring in Rob Halford & a 83 AND 93 version of Metallica, making anagrams from the words “White Zombie”, a satanic sudoku, and much, much more.
My birthday is coming up, (wink) and I’m pretty sure I can picture myself throwing on that metal playlist and busting out the (blacker than the blackest black times infinity) crayons on a sunday afternoon.
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