30

After a rainy start the sun came out yesterday. I'm pleased to say that I passed a very pleasant birthday and I reached 30 smiling. You hear so many people who get negative about turning 30, I highly recommend a trip to Disneyland as the antidote to that. Worked very well for me.

There's a British expression that says "start as you mean to go on" so I took that to heart yesterday and began the day with chocolate covered strawberries for breakfast. Nice. Throw in some of your favorite tea and you can handle anything. (I went for my current fave -- Empire Blend #34 from the Harrod's Heritage Collection. I'm more than halfway through the tin now, I might have to ask my brother to pick me up some more.)

After that I had a quick appointment to keep and then went shopping. My parents let me pick out my own birthday present so off I went. I've worn a silver Celtic knotwork ring on my right hand for years but it broke a few weeks ago so I went to one of my favourite jewelry stores in White Rock to search out a replacement. I picked out a silver and peridot ring. Yes, technically peridot is not my birthstone, but I thought this ring was gorgeous and now it's mine. It only seemed right to get a manicure to go with it. It was my birthday afterall.


(Side note: Any guesses on why this pic is so small when I loaded it exactly the same was as the other two?)

In the evening I went out for dinner with some friends and then we headed off to see X-Men 3. Dinner was great. The waitress even gave me a second sparkler because we couldn't get a photo of the first one before it burnt out. X3 was a little disappointing. And yes, we stayed to watch the final scene but still. I know that they brought in a new Director for #3 and I think he lost his sense of story. The movie finished and all I could think was "I bet Bryan Singer is pissed." It had no compelling narrative -- yes there's a cure for mutancy and is that a good thing or not? But a good story tells itself through the characters experiencing it and this movie felt like little dioramas that we were peering in at but never actively engaged with. (Remember dioramas from grade 4?) But even with all that said, there was a lot of Hugh, so it wasn't a total loss.

After all the celebrations in Anaheim last week I felt like I had already celebrated my birthday and wasn't really expecting anything particular on the day itself. What a nice surprise to have such a great day too. Bonus. Happy birthday to me. That was fun. I think we should do it again next year.