Day 5 of being 30

I am officially 30 years old now. Three decades into my existence, over the hill, whatever... I'll tell you, 30 feels pretty similar to 29 and to 28 and to what 31 will probably feel like. There's no earth-shattering feeling - like suddenly all my joints start aching and the arthritis instantly sets in. No, I still feel pretty good. Although I have to say, after my wonderful party in the park, I was ready to curl up in bed by 7:30. Thinking back to my last significant birthday, 21 - that's a pretty huge difference. I think that night we were probably out until at least 3am. I like 30.

For the party, I wanted to do something really mellow and fun and laid-back, so we had a get-together in Fort Mason meadow, which is across from our house. It's basically a big, open meadow above Fort Mason, with a nice view out over the Bay towards the Golden Gate Bridge, and a great view of the Pacific Heights neighborhood of S.F. The weather was nearly perfect - beautiful sunny day, not too hot. The only drawback was the ever-present wind. Many days, though, the wind can really make things miserable. Today it was just a small nuisance - it wasn't too cold and the wind wasn't blowing quite as hard as it can.

We lugged blankets, beer, food and lawn games over at 3 and immediately set to chowing down. It was a potluck, with many many good eats. We had pesto pasta salad, tequila lime chicken wings and thighs, corn and black bean salad, more corn and black bean salad, a corn and avacado salad (there was an unusually large ratio of corn dishes for some reason), spinach dip, baguettes, cookies, more cookies, and popsicles. I stuffed myself with delicious food.

We just hung out on the blankets chatting, and then I got to work putting my new lawn game together - Ladderball. We played this with our friend Jordan in Portland before we left, and I loved it. When I spotted it in Sports Authority, I couldn't wait to play! It's basically just a bunch of PVC pipe put together with three horizontal bars. Then you play with two balls connected by a thread, trying to loop it around the bars. Okay - I'll just show you a picture:

You play with teams of two, standing opposite each other, and the low bar is worth 3 points, mid-bar worth 2 and top bar is 1 point. You get three tosses each turn. Whichever team gets to 20 points first is the big winner. I must humbly admit that my team was the winner twice. And in one turn I scored 9 points (that's three throws on the 3 point bar for non-math types). I love it.

Here's an action shot of Neil:

And here's what it looks like when you earn 2 points (1 point for each set of balls on the top rung):


Me, winning: :)

After ladderball, we moved on to Bocce ball.

And then we finished up with cake around 7:15. Not too much to report, as we all just kind of hung out, which was what I wanted. All in all, a perfect day. And I was ready for bed by 7:30...

In other birthday news, on Monday my garden gave me a great little birthday present by having lettuce and cilantro ready to be picked! I brought home two heads of red butterhead and one head of green leaf lettuce and a few sprigs of cilantro. We've been eating the lettuce on sandwiches the last two days (yummy) and I had the cilantro on some salmon last night. I have to say, it was pretty darn delicious, straight from the garden. Not to mention, just beautiful:

And finally, on Tuesday night, we went up to our favorite burger joint, Polkers, for dinner. We ordered our burgers (cheese for me, BBQ Bacon for Neil) and then proceeded to have a really nice, leisurely conversation. I guess more leisurely than I even noticed, because apparently our waiter forgot to put our order into the cook and so the burger's were taking a long time. I was completely oblivious to this fact, having a nice chat with Neil, but the waiter apologized profusely and comped our beers. I never get stuff for free - and even better, for late food that I didn't even realize was late. Cool!! So we got two cold, delicious Widmer Hefewiezen's for 0 dollars (my favorite price). And the burgers were mouth-wateringly wonderful, perfectly cooked, and the curly fries were scrumptious with ranch dressing. Lovely.

Last night I went and ordered four bridesmaid dresses from JCrew - free shipping when you order them through the store and you can also return them directly to the store - YAY! Let's get some opinions, which ones do you all like?

My favorite is #2. And they are going to 3-day air them to me, so they'll be here when Chelsea comes to visit in 2 weeks. She can choose which one will work the best.

And then, tonight, unrelated to my birthday, but still nice, I am going to an oyster bar after work with some co-workers and the Ferry Building, which has a lovely view of the Bay. It should be perfect on a really nice, sunny afternoon. It was perfectly warm when I sat outside for lunch today.

Neil gave me a pasta maker for my birthday and I can't wait to fire it up and eat some fresh pasta. That will probably happen this weekend!

All in all, a great birthday week. And more to come - my mom, dad, sister and nephew are all coming to visit next weekend, so there should be more celebration to come. See, turning 30 - not so bad! :)