Birthday Galore

Dan's 29th birthday came and went, and the lucky guy got to celebrate for five days.

Wednesday: I finally invited my former roommates Meagan and Julie for an apartment house-warming (nine months after the fact) and we dove into Dan's birthday cake I made that day: a devil's food cake with chocolate mint icing. I am not a fan of mint but this cake had such a subtle flavor that even I had seconds.




Thursday: I threw Dan a mini-birthday party a deux that included taco dinner (He loves anything Mexican) and more chocolate cake (this time with ice cream--as requested by the bday boy) and present-giving: A Nintendo Wii. Usually Dan scolds me if I buy him a big gift for this birthday and so I was prepared for Dan to tell me to go return it, but this time, heroically, he accepted the present with no problem.


Taco mouth.

Friday, Saturday & Sunday: Dan and I jumped on the BoltBus heading to Boston to meet up with his parents for a Dan-centric, record-shopping filled weekend. Seriously, that's all we did in Boston. And eat. A lot. The best: a delicious cheese-filled cannolli from the Italian North End. The worst: cupcakes at Lulu's from the Italian North End. Bad cupcakes are bad. We thought we spotted another cupcakery called Johnny Cupcakes on Newbury Street but when we walked in, we discovered that we were in a t-shirt store all cupcake-themed. Yes, I got one because how could I not? The t-shirts were displayed on baking sheets. Oh, and then we met up with Dan's work buddy Andrew who is studying at HARV-ard.

Really. It was all about Dan. All weekend long.



Me and Dan at Boston Commons.


Dan's parents at dinner.

I did spend the greater part of the weekend taking shots on my new camera for my first assignment for photo class. We were asked to take about 30-40 pictures of one person, place or thing. I felt really nervous picking the right subject but then I started taking a bunch of pics at--where else--one of the record shops, which turned out to be my theme. I also started a second theme of Dan's shoes. I will be uploading them shortly to Flickr so stay tuned.

Sunday: Rode the Boltbus home, dropped off our things and changed and ran out the door to meet Dan's poker buddies for some delicious birthday dinner at Peter Luger Steakhouse, a New York institution that always makes the "best restaurants" lists. I just saw them on the Food Network touting them as the best place to get steak in America. The steak WAS really good. Not Buenos Aires, Argentina good, but good in a different way. What really blew me away was the bacon appetizer. At $3 a piece, you get one slice of bacon practically the size of a hot dog and super thick. I have never had anything like it, and it was pretty amazing. The waiters in white shirts and bow ties sang Happy Birthday to Dan, throwing a handful of gold chocolate coins on the table for good luck. Real classy.


The poker group (minus Kayleen) at Peter Luger.

After all this birthday celebration, I didn't have to go to work on Monday. Dan did. Birthday's over.