My birthday was April 28, and the whole birthday weekend was fabulous!

On my actual birthday, I started my new position as a volunteer zookeeper, which was incredibly awesome. Since all that goes under the category of "writing about work," it's all written in friends-protected entries at the blog. (Email me if you'd like to read and need details about how to do so.)

The next day was my birthday dinner, which rocked! It was Joe and me, of course, joined by Arianne, Chris, Shelby and Morgan (who we know through Joe's work connections), and Alyssa and Jason (also known as MissP and Macnut in some circles), our friends Joe and I met online ten years ago, before we'd even met each other! All of them are super cool people who I had fun sharing my birthday with! We went to Buca di Beppo, where I also went last year. Though, THIS time, pictures were actually taken! Hooray!

I totally stole some of these from Arianne (mouse over for captions)~

Highlights were the liter of wine that was joyfully and quickly consumed. Mostly by me. Hee! As well as our favorite main courses, including spicy stuffed shells and chicken marsala. We also got pizza, a big-ass salad, and two types of garlic bread (one with cheese, one without). At one point Alyssa cracked me up by announcing, "So, no one wants the garlic bread without cheese, then? Whose idea was it to order garlic bread with no cheese??" We chatted about movies, of course, and Australia, and zookeeping, and laughed a lot. Also fun was ordering every dessert on the menu except for two. Well damn, they took my beloved bread pudding off the menu (how dare they!), so we had to be extra sure to enjoy the rest of what they offered, sugar-coma wise, to be sure to get the full Buca experience. And, as was expected, everything was super delicious, and it was a wonderful time! Oh, I also got awesome birthday gifts, including travel/Australia related books from Arianne, and a huge tub of Laffy Taffy from Shelby and Morgan, as well as a beautiful keepsake box from Alyssa and Jason. And Joe got me a new subscription to my Flickr Pro account! Very cool stuff! Though, I may have to ask people not to give me candy for my birthday anymore, because I love it too much and keep eating it all, and apparently, sugar likes to turn into layers of body fat the exact moment it touches my lips, so I'm going to have to be careful of that... as soon as all the taffy is gone. Which it almost is!

Anyway!

So that night was incredibly fun, and ended with me stumbling home in a very happy stupor. Good times!

The next day, Arianne came over to my neck of the woods and we waited for the bus to arrive to take us to the Book Festival at UCLA. It is held every year, always around my birthday, apparently. But neither of us had been before, so we thought, why the hell not? While we waited for the bus to arrive, we both felt hungry, and noticed a sushi sign across the street. It's super close to my apartment, yet I'd never been, so we walked over to try it, and it turned out to be quite good.

At one point, the people next to us allowed their child to turn on a very loud portable video game with lots of sound effects, and it apparently never occurred to them to ask him to keep the volume down or anything. It was really out of place, especially given the fancy atmosphere of the restaurant. Anyway, this was going on while we perused the dessert menu.

"Is anything standing out to you?" Arianne asked, gesturing to the menu.

I looked up at her and said through all the byooooo, bee, bee, byooo noises, "Why yes! Something is indeed standing out to me more than anything else!" which made her laugh, which made me laugh. It was awesome. Even more awesome was the dessert that we shared, which was tempura green tea ice cream with chocolate sauce and berries. (Yeah, it was not a healthy eating weekend, but birthday weekends never are, really.) Perhaps most awesome of all is that the child turned off his game before I was forced to break it, or him. Yay, no jail time!

Finally, we made it to the Book Festival, which consisted of UCLA being covered in tons and tons of people as well as book tents! And food tents! And dogs! It was madness, I tell you. Awesome, cool madness, and even though we spent a couple of hours there, we in no way saw everything. I think I'll have to go there all three days next year. At least two, anyway. It was a lot of fun, and I ended up with a cool book from the Bodhi Tree Bookstore tent, as well as a free book about tattoos. I love tattoos, and am fascinated by them, even though I don't have any of my own (and not sure if I ever will).

Afterwards, we were hungry again and headed to the cheesecake factory, where we had dinner and cheesecake. I ate too much cheesecake, personally (and vowed to get back to healthy eating asap... uh, still hasn't quite happened yet). Even so - delicious.

And that was that - the end of birthday weekend! It was a really fantastic one. I can't believe it - 25 years old now. That sounds so much more grown up than I feel, somehow. I have a feeling I'll keep saying that with every birthday that rolls around! Hopefully I'll also keep saying what I'm about to, which is this - I love birthdays! I love celebrating with friends and having a really fun time, and I'm happy this one was so much fun! Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday emails and voicemails, cards, and gifts. You all helped make my birthday and weekend wonderful, and I appreciate it so very much. I love you guys!

The rest of the birthday weekend pictures are here.