Happy Birthday to Me

Yesterday was my 37th birthday, so on Saturday I celebrated with my almost-annual party at home. Every year, it gets harder and harder to even think about planning the party until after New Year's, and this year I didn't send out invitations until the Monday before. Which of course meant that a number of people already had plans and were unable to attend. However, I still got a pretty good turnout:

• Subrata (Susan was home sick)
• Chad and Camille
• Mark
• Josh, a cow-orker of mine
• James, another cow-orker, and a fairly recent hire at that
• Lisa and Michel
• Syd, Jade and Elizabeth

So we had a variety of munchies, and of course cake from the Prolific Oven. I managed to order just about the right amount of cake this year, as we had just a few pieces left over (which we polished off on Sunday).

So, as usual, a good time was had by all. Even the cats, who seemed to enjoy the action (except for Jefferson, who hid under the bed).

I ought to have a party during the summer, too, so we can take advantage of my patio!

Sunday we rested. We still haven't seen the Narnia movie, but I was feeling like having a lazy day at home doing not-too-much, especially since we spent much of Saturday cleaning the house (which looks much better now!). Actually I ended up putting more books up for sale on eBay, which I needed to do anyway. But that's about the extent of my productivity.

My actual birthday yesterday was fun, though. I did go in to work, but Debbi didn't, since her employer gave them Martin Luther King Day (not to be confused with Lee-Jackson-King Day) off. So she came down to go out to lunch with me - and brought a big bouquet of balloons with her for my office! Very nice! (And it guaranteed that people would be dropping into my office for the next couple of days wishing me a happy birthday.) We went out to Britannia Arms for lunch with my friends Andrew and Cliff and ate plenty of bad-for-you food. And in the evening Debbi took me out to dinner at Don Giovanni's, one of my favorite restaurants.

So it was a low-key birthday, but a good one, overall!

The rainy season is continuing to lurch along. It's raining lightly as I write this. Saturday morning we got buckets and buckets of it, which was neat. I wish we'd gotten more on Sunday - a rainy day lying around would have been perfect. On the other hand, we went for a long walk before sunset, and wouldn't have if it had been raining.

It finally cleared up enough to play Ultimate frisbee last Thursday, though. I'm definitely playing better this year than I have before. My instincts are still not great, my endurance sucks, and I don't make a lot of defensive plays. On the other hand, I manage to take some better players out of big plays through good positioning, my forehand throw is shaping up pretty nicely, and I've made some sort of a breakthrough in my catching skills, and rarely miss a disc anymore! In fact, I made a nifty (if messy, on the muddy, cut-grass field) sliding catch Thursday night for a score. Very rewarding!

I'd like to work on making better choices on making cuts, and throwing the disc, as I sometimes do some just plain stupid things. It's one thing to push the envelope a bit, it's another to throw the disc and think, "Why the heck did I do that?" I get away with those more often than I probably should, through dumb luck.

Anyway, we hopefully have another 2 months of frisbee left, and I'm hoping we don't get rained out too often.