Happy Birthday To Me!

This weekend, and like every 29th October, I celebrated a birthday. This year it was my 26th one, so I’m getting pretty good at them now. It was also the 2nd one that I’ve spent here in America! Although it sucks not to be at home with the family, I had a great weekend with all the Americans.

The weekend got off to a great start when my desk/office space was decorated at work and I was brought in a breakfast and several desserts that people had baked for me; this coupled with the donuts will require several trips to the gym this coming week. Perrrrrhaps. Friday night we a small gathering of us went to watch Indiana Ice (my first Ice Hockey game!); I was naively surprised at how cold it was. I mean I understand that it has to be cold for the ice etc etc, but surely a little warming in the stands wouldn’t go a miss? For a country that LITERALLY burns petrol for fun (I have accounts from people that used to when they were younger. True story), I think they could justify heating something up that needs to be cool.

The previous week a big group of friends from work went downtown for a meal to celebrate Tim’s birthday (boyfriend of the American Kim in England), and we kinda tagged my birthday onto it. It was a great meal, the restaurant we went to is famous for it’s shrimp cocktail sauce. It. Was. Mind. Blowing. For me, I don’t even mean that in a good way; my eyes were streaming, nose running and I don’t even want to think about what could have been going on under the table. It turns out the main ingredient of the sauce is horseradish, so that explains a lot. This Saturday, my birthday, I woke up about halfway through the first half of the Chelsea vs Arsenal game … pretty much just in time to see Van Persie’s equaliser. At the final whistle, and having won 3-5, I sent a text message to my Dad to say “I don’t care what’s in this parcel, this day can’t get any better!!”. By the “parcel” I mean the huge delivery that had been made to work earlier during the week. Sent from home, it was like being a little kid again trying to resist the urge to even have a little peek …

The next hour and half was a Skype session with the family back home where I unwrapped food, clothes, tea bags, and other gifts. My favourite being this awesome Arsenal shirt from Mr and Mrs Jay.

After the Skyping, I was due to go out paintballing with some friends from work. I won the first game, which made some stranger playing with us assume I was some kind of awesome as he fist bumped AND high fived me; one or the other, pal. (Un)fortunately my showing in the other games meant we no longer shared any congratulations and he soon tagged on to someone else. Saturday night I had a great meal with friends and then a little outing afterwards.

        

Sunday was the day of rest, and I even had my little birthday cake that was sent over in my parcel …trying to work out how to actually light the candle was an event in itself as my apartment doesn’t have gas and neither did I have a lighter or matches!

Thanks once again to everyone for their birthday messages, cards, and gifts. Also thank you to the Castetter family for including me on their family birthday celebrations a couple of weekends before!

It’s scary to think that I’m now 4 years off 30 …