Happy Birthday to Me

My birthday was yesterday. I turned 35. Karen worked really hard to make the entire weekend fun for me. All throughout the weekend things would occurred related to my birthday. It was kind of fun. On Friday evening we went to the ham radio store to buy me my first ham radio. I didn't actually get it until my birthday party, but it was fun to pick it out. I finally got to play with it a little bit this morning. It's very confusing and the instructions seem to be very wrong at times, but I'm trying to learn. I'm certain it will get better. After the radio store we went to See's Candies. Apparently they are only five minutes apart from each other. That is a very handy thing to know. In my mind the radio store was way out of the way. We go to See's every month or so, so it's nice to know that we can just swing over to the radio store if I need. After getting some yummy chocolate we went over to the Church bookstore. I wound up buying a couple of books that interested me. To be honest, I haven't found this bookstore as interesting to browse around as I did the one in San Jose, but I'm certain that's just me. They have a bakery attached to this store and there was a great smell when we came in. They were selling orange rolls at half price because they had a bunch of them to get rid of. We wound up getting a dozen. Later on when we tried them we realized why they were having a hard time getting rid of them. They were nasty! We had already given half ours away by that time and I think we're looking for someone to take the rest of them now. It was quite disappointing. After the bookstore we drove over to a nearby mall to see about getting some dinner. We had never been over there before and it turned out to be a happening little mall. We didn't actually go into the mall, but I have since heard that it is a very nice mall to walk around. We're going to have to go back there and check it out. We decided on eating at PF Chang's, but this particular one was too busy so we headed out for one of their other locations. We ran into a really nasty accident on the way. Traffic was backed up pretty bad. We also ran into some rain which really annoyed Karen. She had just gotten the van washed and now it was raining. Doesn't it just figure? We made it out to the other PF Chang's and had a really wonderful dinner. We've become very fond of their lettuce wraps and they didn't disappoint. We had a couple of other dishes that were somewhat new and they were quite nice as well. Add into that the atmosphere and the company and it was a really nice dinner. Afterward we went next door to Border's Books. Like we hadn't had enough bookstores for one evening, right? :-) I don't know that I had been to that particular Border's before, but it definitely won me over. They had a great science fiction section with a few rpg book options. They even had some of the Munchkin card sets which really surprised me. We were able to find a few things worth spending money on, so it was a good time.

On Saturday I got up early and mowed the grass. This may not sound fun, but it made me happy. Mowing the grass is definitely work, but I love the feeling of accomplishment it gives me. I love looking out at our yard and seeing it nicely trimmed. It's weird, I know, but it makes me happy. I had decided a couple of months ago that I would mow the grass every Saturday morning. Doing it once a week keeps it looking nice and makes it not that tough to maintain. Unfortunately circumstances had conspired to make me unavailable the last three Saturdays so it didn't get mowed. I could have mowed it during the week, but that would have missed the whole point of me making my Saturday mornings available. Silly, I know. Regardless, by the time this Saturday morning came our grass was looking pretty bad. The back grass was especially thick. I probably could have gotten it done in under two hours, but our neighbor came over to chat in the middle of it. It was nice to chat with him but it did throw a little wrench into our schedule. Especially since Karen was feeling a little bit of a time crunch on the day. I got everything done except for the trimming in the back yard and we decided that could wait. We got cleaned up and headed out for the day. Our first stop was to the office supply store. Where else would a guy want to go on his birthday weekend? hehehe. I actually did want to go there. I had some office organization stuff I wanted to pick up. Again we found plenty of things to spend money on, so the trip must have not been that bad. After that we went to Macy's so that Karen could get some more make-up. We found out that they stopped making her old make-up so she had to try to find the equivalent in the new stuff. She played the smiling customer while the little make-up lady picked out just the right hydration cream, foundation, blush, red dye number five, weed whacker, post-hole digger and cement mixer that we just couldn't live without. I dutifully guarded the purse and smiled and nodded at all of the appropriate places. I'm just joking, though. It didn't bother me at all and Karen seemed to be enjoying herself so I was happy. After that we went over to get the balloons and cake for my party on Sunday night. It was an ice cream cake so we had to run it home before we could do anything else. After securing the cake we went to a place called Boondocks. It is one of these mini-golf/video game/go-kart/laser tag/everything-under-the-sun-to-entertain-kids type of places. We had never been there before but it sounded like it would be fun so I chose to go there as one of my birthday activities. Our friends, Hank and Marleah, came with us along with their kids. It was a lot of fun. We had to duck out early as we had a family birthday dinner at Olive Garden.

On Sunday morning I had to hop up and prepare a lesson. I was teaching for the first time in Elder's Quorum and hadn't prepared my lesson yet. I got it finished and ran off to church. I think the lesson went okay, but nobody really said anything so I can't be certain. As Karen said, I guess we'll know if they don't ask me to teach again. After church I went home teaching. I like my families and I like chatting with them so home teaching isn't really much of a chore. Even though I put it off as if it were. After I got back home it was almost time for people to show up for the birthday dinner at our place. Karen fixed a wonderful dinner of turkey and mashed potatoes. I loved it. The birthday cake was my favorite ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins. We did the whole present opening thing where I got way more presents than I deserved and then everyone went home. Karen and I did a little bit of cleaning up and then went upstairs for some well-deserved sleep. It was a long weekend. Whew!