Dave's Birthday

I am spoiled. I do not cook on a daily basis. In fact in the past few years, my cooking has dwindled to almost nothing. But tradition in our house is that the birthday person gets to pick the birthday dinner and when Dave picked dinner at home, it didn't seem right to make him prepare it. So this morning I girded my loins and headed out to the shops. J and I grocery and party shopped from noon through mid-afternoon. When I got home, it was time to start the potatoes for twice-baked potatoes. After a brief stint in the studio (everyday is a work day from now till Nov. 1), the rest of the day was spent on final present wrapping, making the birthday ikebana, and cooking. Okay, so Dave even helped with the potatoes and he made the salad. And I had him cook the steak--it was a very thick bone-in Angus rib-eye and I didn't want to risk spoiling it. Besides, aren't men supposed to do all the grilling?

In my morning outing I picked up a really nice bottle of champagne (Hiedsiek Monopole) to start dinner and we had the last bottle we brought back from the Turley vineyard in California to accompany the steak. Over dinner we watched the season premier of Dr. Who! The new doctor has charisma, but I still miss C. Eggleston. I do, however, like the casting choices of men with creepy villains in their past to play the doctor. This one was Barty Crouch in one of the Harry Potters.

Dessert was a selection of cakes from Southern Sweets with star candles and sparklers on them. Our common Publix grocery store had both sparklers and champagne poppers in the birthday section. Dave didn't read the instructions on the champagne popper before pulling the string and exploding it into his hand. Oops. More gunpowder in those than I remember (and would have thought legal in our highly regulated society). J insisted we all wear party hats and use the rotating green plastic cake plate that lights up and sings happy birthday in a sweet voice with an oriental accent.

Presents were the box, three new Cook's Illustrated cookbooks, a Nixie tube clock (geek, geek, geek), Waterworks (a game from his parents that got him all nostalgic and excited--we're going to play today), a rubber duck, a subscription to Make magazine, the King of Marvin Gardens on dvd, and Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture Volume 1 (geek, geek, geek, geek, GEEK!).

After presents and cake we finished watching Dr. Who and all went to bed late. A good time was had by all. Dave thanks everyone who sent birthday wishes through Glass Incarnate.