29

Ah, my birthday today... it was nice. Got home from work relatively on time. Grilled a steak and ate it with a glass of dark red shiraz. Had molten chocolate cake and perfectly ripened Royal Riviera pear for dessert (part of my gift from R was an 8-pack of these puppies). Next I opened more gifts from R. She bought me some cool new clothes from Banana Republic. Then we watched -- you guessed it -- an episode of Twin Peaks. And now I'm wrapping up the evening on my computer. Tonight was a celebration of all things Jeff. Kudos to R for arranging things and sharing in the party. Who says you need to go out on your birthday to have a good time?

We did do a pseudo-birthday dinner out on Friday night at a Spanish tapas restaurant called Amada in Philly. We tried octopus for the first time, which was pretty close to calamari, only grilled instead of deep fried. We also had some ultra-yummy clams, seared tuna, crab-stuffed peppers, and a few other non-seafood choices. We followed up the meal with There Will Be Blood at the Ritz. Very interesting movie -- the production design was done by Jack Fisk, an associate of Lynch's, and the score was composed by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. Those personnel, combined with a visionary director, make me wonder how I managed to not see this movie sooner. It was another challenging one, primarily a character piece. In the end I preferred No Country For Old Men out of the two, but this one was still a worthy investment of time. Further continuing our catch-up on the Oscar season we watched the DVD of Atonement on Saturday. I'm worried watching all of these great films are going to spoil us. Can we really watch something like Dan in Real Life after this? We'll find out soon because it's coming up on the Netflix list. Atonement was well done, but my sleepiness got a little in the way of my enjoyment of it. By refusing to become horizontal, I managed to make it to the end of the movie, but I did have some problems balancing my head on my neck for a few moments here and there.

Speaking of sleep, it's spots time for me (ask my dad about the origin of "spots" because I don't know it). Age 30 is coming. Maybe I'll have more to reflect on then.