A birthday story in pictures

First up: awesome happy hour with work friends at the always fabulous Zaytinya. Yes, the crazy hat made another appearance. You don't see me in hats much because they never fit on my enormous head. But this one did... hence its repeat appearance :)


After Zaytinya, we went to the Kennedy Center to see Wynton Marsalias, who was great. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of that, so we'll fast forward to the actual birthday. Brad took me to the most rockin steakhouse, Bobby Van's, which is also the same place we went on our first date.


To carry on the tradition (apparently the tradition of promoting heart failure!), we both had the sirloin covered in gargonzola cheese. Unlike on our first date, I broke tradition of eating the entire thing and had a fantastic lunch the next day. It is really unlike any other steak I have ever had. Super fabulous.


Then, despite the fact that we hadn't planned on having dessert except for cake at home, they brought out a piece of birthday bread pudding. And who couldn't resist at least trying a bite or two. Or all of it :)

After dinner, we thought we'd burn off some calories by walking over to the White House, since we had heard they dyed the fountains green for St. Patrick's Day.

Well, either they lied or they used some weak dye, because you can clearly see that at least the north side fountain is clearly not green.

Once we were home, the present opening commenced. I won't post all the pictures, because they're all pretty awful, but thought I'd at least share the highlights:

new heart rate monitor for the gym (clearly a necessary item after the huge steak!)

a 50mm f/1.8 lens!! wohoo!

not the most flattering picture, but I thought you'd enjoy the story. I kept saying "I shall call it mini lens" (you know, from Austin Powers... due to its mini size compared to my other lenses? Okay, never mind!)

Then we had some cake. I had been telling Brad for weeks that I wanted to pretend I was nine again and have a Dairy Queen ice cream cake ("you know with the chocolate ice cream layer, then the fudge layer, then the chocolate cookie crumble layer, then the vanilla ice cream layer, then the whipped cream frosting!"). Well, he pulled through and while it wasn't the St. Patrick's Day themed cake he ordered ("No, birthday. Birthday ballons." - not so smart Dairy Queen guy), he pulled through and got an awesome tasting cake.