Birthday

My birthday the other day started off a bit rough... I woke up from one of those bizarre, stressful dreams where someone is doing something totally not-real-life, but it still stresses me out the wazoo. In this dream, which I can't really remember now, my landlord was doing something stupid with my apartment. When I regained full consciousness I had a stressed-out feeling, and my arthritis was acting up in my knee. (It's been bothering me for about a month now.) As I lay in bed listening to the radio, wishing for more time on the snooze alarm, the weather forecast pronounced dire windchills, making me even more reluctant to emerge from the covers. Mom and B were far away on their cruise, and, although my brother and dad remembered I was having a birthday, I needed to stay at work late for a career seminar, and so wouldn't be doing anything special with family. *sigh*

Things got better from there, though.

When I went outside, I discovered that the cold wasn't nearly as bad as it sounded.

I stopped at Cakeology on the way to work to pick up two dozen cakettes... one dozen of chocolate for me to take home and put in lunches and have for dessert, and one dozen of mixed to share at knitting lunch & work. Turns out they had increased in price, and, since I didn't have my wallet (just what money I needed for the day... I was wearing my fancy, pocketless clothes for the seminar), I could only buy 1.5 dozen. Sorry work friends, but it was *my* birthday, so you were the ones who got shorted.

(Cakettes make not-very-birthdayish days more festive.)

A friend gave me a gift certificate to Wolseley Wool, and another friend paid me for the painting that I "stored on his wall", hoping he might decide he liked it enough to buy it. ;) (Plus, it was better than storing it in my closet... it's not one I have room to hang.)

I was a bit late for knitting lunch, and not many people made it, but it was still fun! It also meant that the cakettes went a bit further. ;)

Although work was busy, it wasn't insanely so, and the seminar was nice, although not meant for someone like me (dang... but I still got to talk to one of the guys about other opportunities).

I came home in the dark, and discovered my amaryllis had opened for my birthday.

(Photos obviously not taken the same day.)

I arrived home just in time to watch Bones, which is now on at the same time as Gray's Anatomy (which I taped). A friend called right after (luckily I also had The Mentalist set to tape), and we talked for an hour. Then I went over to my mom's to bring in the mail and pick up the birthday present they had left on the table with instructions not to open until the special day. ;)

On the way back I ended up talking to my building's caretaker in the hall, and a neighbour as well. We ranted for a bit about how the landlord doesn't seem to care about the building much these days. (Well, the neighbour and I did, the caretaker doesn't want to say something that will get him in trouble.)

All in all, not a bad day. :)