my wonderful friends all got together for my birthday monday. we went to dinner at shirlington thai, one of my favorite restaurants in DC.

melanie, me, cassie, carlie, tabbi, chareese (see what happens when you make faces in pictures??? haha)

melanie, kayla, me

kayla is an incredible baker and made two INCREDIBLE cakes:

yellow cake with italian buttercream

and chocolate – my favorite!

people are still talking about these cakes.

ahem. i am officially a quarter of a century… (moment of silence). as many of you know, this was a hard one to swallow for me – but i made it out ok.

my friend chareese invited me to join her parents and her brother, richard, for a weekend up in new york city. i tell you what – i need to get myself up there more often. it was a wonderful weekend, and let me show you why.

the apple store is open 24 hours a day. (dad, did you catch that?) 24 hours a day, seven days a week. also? they have a pretty awesome glass elevator. richard and i rode in style. the people were impressed.

well, at least chareese thought we were funny.

while walking to the apple store my favorite red satin ballet flats were ruined in the rain. it was a sad thing for me. let us take a moment to remember these fine shoes.

richard was the candid photographer of the trip – which was great and awful all at the same time. i invariably look up every time a camera is pointed at me just in time for the photo to snap, so i always end up being the only person looking at the camera. awkward? yes.

saturday was so beautiful. a little bit chilly, but the sun was out and the streets were hoppin. i love this shot richard took of the city.

saturday night we had dinner at tao. it was incredible. here is a picture of megan, me, and chareese enjoying the sushi appetizers. mmmmm.

after dinner we headed off to the theater to see mary poppins. nothing beats a new york broadway. the performers were all amazingly talented and i love how they adapted the story for the play.

and then? times square.

sunday was rainy and we lost richard, which resulted in the end of our picture taking. if we had documented this day with photos you would have seen me with wet hair and smudged make-up, swollen feet from walking hours and hours and hours, a couple pairs of new shoes, and tickets to WICKED. that was the highlight of the trip for me. i’ve owned the soundtrack for years and have been dying to see the play. if you’re ever in town, whatever you do, make it to this show. you won’t regret it.

and so that is it. we got back into town late sunday night and i turned 25 fifteen minutes later. and so begins another year. the past year has been one of the most challenging and rewarding years for me. i can’t wait to see what the next year has in store, because one thing i’ve learned – you just never know.

last night while walking through the frozen-food aisle in the grocery story i came across the best deal ever. totino’s pizzas for 88 cents. 88 CENTS! cat and i used to eat these all the time growing up, and i remembered them being pretty decent. so what did i do? i loaded up my arms and packed my freezer to the brim with cheap, thin-crust pizza.

i decided while writing this to find a picture of my glorious pizzas – this turned out to be a horrible mistake. upon googling “totino’s pizza” the first site i came across was a news story about the recent recall of totino’s pizza because of possible E. coli contamination. yes. E.coli.

also, i particularly enjoyed this fact from wikipedia:

“Totino’s pizza has been criticized for its high amount of trans fat, each containing three to five grams, well over the two gram a day FDA-recommended limit. In 2006, Totino’s completed its phasing out of 100% real cheese in its pizzas.”

and so now i have a freezer full of fake cheese, trans fat and e. coli.