Wednesday went off successfully- we celebrated my birthday and I didn’t even break down in tears once!  Score.

It was actually a really good day.  Well, it didn’t start off very well- I missed my bus, which is something I NEVER do, after waiting 25 minutes for the next one, I saw some old lady reading the book that our friend Millie wrote and self-published!  I wish I had taken a picture, but it was early and I was trying to successfully hold my coffee without spilling, so I kept my arms to myself.  I like to think that that was God’s little birthday present to me.

Another unexpected birthday present- after reading the post about my inability to properly drink out of a coffee cup, my friend Elizabeth’s boyfriend, Chris, recommended that I hold the cup lower.  DUDE- this actually works.  I only spilled on myself once on Friday.  AMAZING.  (I understand how pathetic this whole situation is, but I’m genuinely thankful and excited.)  Just to be more environmentally friendly though, I did add an OXO Thermal mug to my Amazon wish list.  Just in case you’re curious.

The rest of the day went even better than missed busses, random book sightings and less spilled coffee.  Barrie organized some friends to come meet us for drinks at Black Bottle after work.  Besides delicious libations, I also learned about THE GREATEST CHRISTMAS TRADITION IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.

I present to you, Tio de Nadal.

It’s a magic Christmas log that poops treats when you hit it with a hot stick.  Seriously, I think I’m in love.  I KNOW I’m in love with the fact that Cristina, our Columbian friend who first told me about this amazing tradition, proceeded to sing sing the entire Caja Tio song in the middle of a yuppie wine bar.

Mike picked me up from happy hour and took me to my birthday dinner at Matt’s in the Market.  I was so excited about eating dinner there that I had bravely resisted snacking on a single thing during the 2 hours spent at Black Bottle.  Well, maybe I snuck a few bits of pork belly of Miles’ plate.  Perchance.

Dinner was awesome- even better than when we went there for brunch with Mary and Scott.

Flatbread with goat cheese, carmelized onions and proscuitto.  Sweet and salty heaven.

The best freaking scallops EVER.    I would sell my soul to the devil to learn how to get a crust on scallops like that.  Or maybe I could just take a cooking class.

Mike’s short ribs sitting on a bed of grits.  I warned him that he may not like grits, because he’s generally not a fan of mushy food (oatmeal, congee, porridge, polenta, etc).  I’m really not much of a grits fan- every time my dad has tried to make them they’ve seemed soggy and bland.  But dear god, these grits were so good- thick and substantial and literally exploding with bits of southern goodness. I stole some of his, even if they were basically sitting in a pool of beef juice.  (I tried to pick from the middle.)  When discussing the goodness of the grits with Barrie later, she was able to pinpoint the secret ingredient- butter.

So thanks to wine, butter and good friends, it was a good birthday.  We just won’t talk about next year yet.

It’s 11:14 right now.  In 46 minutes, I’ll be 29.  And I’m all kinds of twisted about it.

It’s nothing to be worried about- I tend to get a little antsy around birthdays no matter what.  It’s not that I think getting older is a bad thing, per se.  I mean, if you’ve had more than 3 conversations with me, I’ve probably told you about how I am seriously looking forward to being old- my current plan involves having ridiculously long gray hair, wearing large flowered hats, living in a house on a beach boardwalk somewhere with my bff Mary where we will drink vodka out of teacups on our porch every afternoon while we heckle beachcombers.  I’m actually looking forward to getting old- really, really old though, the kind of old where you can walk around and be overtly eccentric without caring about society’s opinion on your slowly deteriorating mental state.

It’s all that stuff in the middle that freaks me out.

So tomorrow I turn 29.  I keep telling people that I think that 29 is way scarier than 30.  30 is a beginning, a new start, a grand adventure.  29 is “Oh crap my twenties are almost over and what do I have to show for it?”  I mean, yes, I’ve accomplished a decent amount, I guess.  But nothing mind-blowing.  Honestly, I don’t even know if I want to accomplish anything mind-blowing.  At this point, I’d be totally happy if I just felt like I knew where I was going to live in 12 months.  Here?  Somewhere else in Seattle?  Back to California?  Somewhere else entirely?  I’ve given up on planning for that stuff.

Honestly, it’s not as bad as it sounds.  Not a bone-crushing, soul-eating black cloud or anything dramatic like that, more like a nagging poke in the back of my mind.  I’ll live.  I have good friends here who are taking me out for cocktails tomorrow, good friends back home who already took me out for dinner during our Thanksgiving trip, good parents who sent me an awesome jacket (thanks Mom and Dad!) and a good husband who knows that when I get all sad and melodramatic and such, there is only one thing to do-

Mock me.

Love.

We just got back from an attempt at attending Trivia Night at a bar down the street from us with some friends (mostly knitters and their significant others).  While Trivia Night didn’t work out so well (evidently they changed Trivia Night to another night or something), it was a good night.  Good people, good conversation, good drinks.  I felt comfortable.  That makes me happy.

Yesterday was Mike’s birthday.  We celebrated by having  dinner at Crush, where we ate one of the best meals I’ve had yet in Seattle.  I really wanted to take pictures, but ever since Scott scolded me about taking food pictures in nice restaurants I’ve held off.  To summarize, we had pork belly with pinata apples and parsnip puree and seared scallops in a carrot soup for appetizers for appetizers, which we shared, followed by Mike’s entree of grilled flank steak with cipolinni onions (aka the best onions ever) and yukon potato puree and my Ling Cod in chorizo broth and meyer lemon foam (I felt so Top Chef).  For dessert, we split the beignets (mmmm!) and spiced chocolate cake (i love spicy chocolate).  It wasn’t the best meal we’ve ever had- that award goes to our Valentine’s dinner last year at Stonehill Tavern (we’re still chasing that Michael Minna high)- but it was definitely the best in Seattle, and my wine pairings made me swoon with delight.  Plus, it was part of Dine Around Seattle’s March promotion, so the whole shebang was under $100.  For Crush, that was a total steal.  Even though Mike was feeling a bit morose about his age, it was a really fantastic night.

To make things even better, tomorrow we’re going to SoCal for a long weekend.  It will be hectic- it always is- but I can’t wait to see friends and family back home.  The warm weather won’t hurt either.

I am pleased to report that Operation Don’t Suck was a huge success!  As I’ve alluded to, Mike has a very uneven past with celebrating birthdays.  But last night even he said “I did way better than usual this year, huh?”  Yay!  Well, considering there were no styrofoam containers of food or Dora the Explorer decorations (I mock, but my party last year was really fun.  But he did decorate with those stupid streamers and will forever suffer for it)

So yeah, Mike earned a lot of good husband points yesterday.  First, he actually gave me a present on my acutal birthday!  This is a major achievement.  Bonus points for the cute packaging details:

(The first Etch-a-Sketch said “Happy,” but I immediately dropped it while trying to take a picture.  Just imagine it’s still there.  Mike had to hold the box with the Etch-a-Sketches in place the entire drive home to keep the message there too.)

Then he whisked me off to our mystery dinner.  But not before he properly outfitted our chariot:

(And so begins a series of crappy iPhone pictures.  I forgot my camera, and Mike didn’t tell me that where we were going would be a really really good place to bring a camera.  Oh well, everything else was good).

We drove down the hill to the Space Needle, where we were going to eat at the restaurant on top, Sky City.  Yay!

Now, people who live in Seattle talk a lot of trash about Sky City.  And I understand why- it’s tourist-tastic.  It’s a restaurant on top of the most iconic building in Seattle, so how can it not be?  And your meal will be expensive, which is hard to justify in a city where there is seriously amazing food everywhere you turn, and a lot of it is 1/4 of what you pay to eat up here.  In fact, I’d always heard rather bad things about the food itself, which actually turned out to be a good thing, because I think low expectations generally result in a better experience.

But even though it’s touristy and expensive, it’s beautiful to look out at everything while you eat.  And it’s something that I feel like you have to do once, and what better excuse than a first birthday in Seattle?  Again, bonus points to Mike for finding a clever way to knock the super touristy Space Needle experience off our list of to-dos in the least cheesy way possible.

And in case you don’t believe me on the touristy factor, look here- you check in for your reservations in a freaking gift shop.

So while you wait for the elevator to come pick you up, you get to look around at all kinds of fabulous t-shirts and choctchkies, including random assortments of golf balls in non-Seattle sports team colors (I think.  I could be wrong about this since I know nothing about sports.  But I saw this, and I thought Lakers.  And then I thought of my two most crazy Lakers fanatic friends, Helaine and Kris.

Random.

We went up the elevator and sat down at our table, which was right by the giant window.  It really is crazy to look at everything.

I had to take a picture of the Specials Menu because it said December 9.  Yay December 9!

Freaking awesome.  (I had the lobster risotto, which was really really good.  Of course, it’s pretty hard to screw up something that combines lobster, vanilla, butternut squash and leeks.  MMMMMM.)

They brought out the requisite Happy Birthday free dessert, which while it wasn’t amazing to eat, their use of dry ice to make a smoke effect was pretty awesome.

After dinner we went out on the observation deck.  All I wanted was to take a picture of us with the skyline in the back.  Unfortunately, I was only able to take one picture before Mike’s fear of heights ended that little dream.  And, since I am the worst photographer in the world and only had my phone, it looked like this:

What do you think- should this be our Christmas Card picture?

All in all, we had good food, good wine and a ridiculously pretty view.  And most of all, my freaking amazing husband actually planned something, which made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  Yay birthdays.  Yay Mike.  Yay birthday dinners!

Tomorrow is my birthday.  While I’m starting to deal with my normal paranoia of getting old, I also cannot stop thinking about what a crazy year it’s been since my last birthday.

On December 9, 2007, I was recovering from the birthday party that Mike had thrown for me the day before- complete with the Dora the Explorer paper decorations he had bought and about 30 of our closest friends crammed into our little apartment in Irvine.  We had just found out that the offer we put down on our house in Anaheim had been turned down.  Mike’s left leg was still a little swollen from his accident during our honeymoon.  Every wall in our home was white.  I saw Mike’s mom at work every day.  Jimmy lived with his parents.  Elizabeth Ng had just gotten engaged to a boy she was kind of dating at our wedding six months earlier.  There was a giant unspoken weirdness between Amy and I but we pretended everything was fine.  Elizabeth Carter was knee deep in nursing school.  Most of Mike’s friends- Ben, Derek, Justin and An- were still deep in the midst of their undergrad.  Mary had just moved back to LA and we were ecstatic that we lived in the same state again.  I had never played Rock Band before.  Derrick was the youngest person in his family.  I had never broken a bone.  Mike would proudly tell people that he never wanted to leave Orange County.

And then the year happened.  That house that our offer got rejected on- we bought it.  And we spent a month remodeling it with the help of our amazing friends and family.  We went from living in the most sterile apartment ever in Irvine to a house in Anaheim with a green living room, a blue kitchen and an orange craft room.  We finished it just in time to host Elizabeth and John’s engagement party, complete with a quesadilla bar, and in May we went to their wedding.  I hung out with Mary every week.  Elizabeth Carter, Justin and Ben graduated, and An and Derek(!) will be done with school in a matter of weeks.  Derrick is an uncle!  Amy and I had a huge fight but then made up and are actually close again.  We hosted barbeques, open houses and birthday parties in our fancy new backyard.  Rock Band was played in our house so often that we somehow ended up with a mike stand.  I completed a triathalon.  I then fell off my bike, broke my wrist, had surgery on it and walked around with a big piece of metal sticking out of my arm for 6 weeks.  Then I had the piece of metal unscrewed while I watched.

And then, of course, Mike got a job offer at Microsoft and we moved to Seattle.  I quit my comfy job at the surgery center, we watched our stuff get packed and we said good-bye to our friends and family.  We were worried that buying the house had been a huge mistake, but when Derek, Justin, Jimmy and Ben moved in, we realized that everything was going to work out.  (Thanks again- you guys are the best tenants ever!)  Mike sold the Rav4, bought the Audi and then sold the Audi.  We found an amazing apartment in the best neighborhood ever in Seattle and lived there with no furniture or internet during our first week in Seattle.  Justin came up to visit us and I spent an entire week trying to entertain him, and in the process he became “our friend” instead of just “Mike’s friend.”  Amy and Derek came and visited us and took us to our first show in Seattle.  I went from thinking public transportation was disgusting to using it every day to get to work (I do still sometimes think it’s disgusting though.)  We started to make new friends and I found the best knitting group in the whole wide world.  I found somebody who runs with me (so we’ve flaked a bit the last two weeks, this Sunday it’s ON) and doesn’t complain when I lag behind.  Mike made a friend up here who may possibly know even more about cars than he does.  We have a group of people that we go out to dinner with regularly.  We’ve started thinking about looking at some investment property up here.

In short, this year has been absolutely, totally unexpectedly, crazy nutso random.   I never would have thought that any of this was going to happen, but I’m glad it did.  This year has been an adventure.  When people ask me how long I think we’ll be in Seattle, I tell them that I honestly have no idea.  I’m over making long-term plans for now.  I’m ready to just sit back and see what’s going to happen.