Happy Birthday to Me!

Yesterday was my birthday, and it was a good one. Quiet, low key, but highly enjoyable in its own way. Really, it was more of a birthday weekend.

I worked at a French conference on Saturday, the hubby and I hit the market (and it was a BEAUTIFUL day for it), and then he and I met up with Carol and her new guy for sushi on Queen West. After all of the boy drama that she's been through lately, it's nice to see her with someone who is making her happy. So cute! And the sushi was good too.

Sunday was apartment cleaning/ camera shopping/ dinner party day. After a quick clean up, we headed out to get me my birthday present, which was a digital camera. As I've probably mentioned, we didn't have one, and I'm so excited to have one now. Yea for new toys! And it takes fabulous pictures. Like the one of my birthday dinner, above. Yummy! We had Greg and Loriann, an old old friend of the hubby's, and his girlfriend, over for dinner. I made steamed mussels with salad and nice bread. It was the perfect dinner party dinner: easy, quick, but sometime special. And everyone enjoyed it, I think.

The hubby took the day off to spend with me yesterday, my actual birthday. He has oodles of vacation time left, and we rarely have the same days off work, aside from weekends, so it was nice to just be together for the day. We went to check out York, and I'm well pleased. Everyone in the graduate English office was very friendly and very helpful (not Mary-Beth at Dal, but then no one could be), and I had a long chat with the head of grad studies, who gave me a lot of good insight. I also met with a prof who did his PhD at York, taught at Dal last year, and is back teaching at York this year. Knowing both institutions made him better able to answer my questions from a "you know that you're always going to compare this with Dal" perspective, which was helpful. But I think that York is going to work quite well for me. And the commute was 55 minutes door to door, which is only 15-20 minutes more than my current commute, so I can handle that.

After an accidental nap (I fell asleep on the sofa while the hubby was out being kind and helpful by finding me a new dentist and optometrist, and buying me flowers), the hubby and I went to Senior's Steakhouse for dinner. Senior's is in some ways funny, and in other ways totally serious. The decor hasn't changed since the 60s, when it first opened, so it's totally old school. However, the food is delicious. The garlic bread and taramosalata to start were rich and yummy, but the steak and baked potato put it over the top. Juicy juicy juicy steak, full of flavour, and a fluffy potato with real butter and sour cream. The garlic mushrooms were a bonus. Yummy! But I totally need to go the gym today, because this is what my plate looked like at the end:


After dinner, all we wanted to do is relax (so full!), so the hubby and I came home and watched 50 First Dates (inspired by the version of "Over the Rainbow" by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole that was playing on the radio at the restaurant) and went to bed early. It was a chilled out, cozy, relaxing night: the perfect way to start off a week.

Work was insane this morning, but it's going to get better. I talked to my boss boss (the highest up of the three), and I'm going to go back to doing my old job, ESL only. It's going to be 90% marketing and 10% sales support, which I'm totally fine with, and it will be about 500% less stressful than what I'm currently doing, so that's the best part. I just needed to know that I wouldn't end up doing a job that I didn't like, and I won't be, so I'm set. Sigh of relief.

Now to go make dinner: fish and greens. We need it after our weekend of gastronomic delights. And then to gym!