what a day!

I've always loved birthdays. When I was a kid, my birthday meant I didn't have to wash dishes, fold clothes, or do any other chores that my siblings had to do. I always hoped that the beans from our garden would need to be snapped--or better yet, picked--on my birthday, so that Andrew and Val would have to suffer through that while I stayed home and watched movies. Mean, yes, but I'm just being honest here! (And if you're wondering why I didn't mention Steph, it's because she never really had to do anything anyway . . .)

Today is my 28th birthday. Praise the Lord, this one was not difficult. Either 24 or 26 (I can't remember anymore!) was torture--I'm not sure why that one was so much harder than the others.

A look back at my day:

• 12:05 a.m. Say goodnight to Val, Jamie, Kimberly, and Steph. Yes, there was a slumber party at my house last night--Jamie was Val's college roommate, and she's on her way back to school. Kimberly, Jamie's friend from home, is driving back to school with her. Steph came over because, well, Jamie is her hero!
• 1:38 a.m. Finally put down my book and go to sleep. I was reading my latest book review blogger book for Thomas Nelson. This is the first book from them that I've been interested in to the point of not being able to put it down. I really wanted to finish it, but I had 100 pages left and knew I'd regret staying up so late.
• 6:55 a.m. Wake up to a Jeremy Camp song on the radio. Funny, because I often refer to My Bridge Radio as Jeremy Camp Radio due to the frequency with which they play his music.
• 8:00 a.m. Rush out of my apartment. I'm late for work on my birthday.
• 8:10 a.m. Buy Daylight Donuts to take in to work. I'm sure I'll be forgiven for being late if I come bearing donuts. Wish I could stop for coffee, but the line at the Coffee Bean is too long.
• 8:12 a.m. Eat a donut while waiting on a train and realize I could have stopped for coffee.
  
• 8:17 a.m. Walk into an empty office. Where is everyone this morning?
• 8:30 a.m. Receive a happy birthday text from Walter, my student from my church's ESL program.
• 8:35-9:10 a.m. My co-workers slowly trickle in. That's the nice thing about summer . . . it's really no big deal if we're not all in the office from 8-4.
  
• 9:03 a.m. Crack open a Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi. I'm gonna need the caffeine today!
  
• 9:25 a.m. My boss (jokingly) asks if I'd like to use Rosetta Stone to learn Vietnamese, as we have a family coming in next week to drop off their child, and they don't speak any English. I just laugh at him.
• 9:30 a.m. Receive this email message from FutureMe.org:
  
  Dear FutureMe,
  
  Try to be more organized in yearbook this year. Use en dash and em dash. Set early deadlines because things won't get done when you hope. Require senior pictures in October and set the sr pages for 2nd deadline. I'm sure there are more things to think about, but I can't remember them right now.
  
  Oh, and HAPPY 28TH BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!
  
  (Can you tell I wrote this when I was frantically trying to finish up the yearbook?)
  
• 9:44 a.m. My mom calls to wish me a happy birthday and ask what kind of coffee I'd like. Yay, coffee!
• 11:15 a.m. Steph asks Dad if we can go out for lunch for my birthday since we went out for Andrew's birthday earlier this week.
• 11:45 a.m. Meet Mom and Dad for lunch at DQ.
• 12:30 p.m. Birthday picture time!
• 1:08 p.m. As I struggle to keep my eyes open, I think once again that I'm too old to be staying up so late. Too bad I don't have those thoughts when I'm actually doing the staying up!
• 4:05 p.m. Take advantage of Amazon's sales to buy Christmas presents.
• 4:20 p.m. Pick up my bookagain.
• 5:15 p.m. Finish book. This is one review I'm looking forward to writing!
• 5:40 p.m. Head over to the parents' for my birthday supper. We had chicken tetrazzini (aka "Take One Fat Hen"), garlic bread, corn, coffee, and homemade ice cream. Muy delicioso!
• 7:30 p.m. Watch 17 Again, one of my birthday gifts, with Mom. She thought the best friend character was hilarious!
• 9:30 p.m. Go home; work on the Advance for a bit. (If you actually click through to see the Advance, you'll find that the person who is in charge of updating the website--me--never posted the most recent issue. Oops.)
  
• 10:15 p.m. Finish blogging.
  
• 10:30 p.m. Crash. I must be getting old!

(Not only do I love birthdays, but I evidently love writing about birthdays, as last year I basically told the same story I told today.)