Happy Birthday, and The Long, Hot Walk

Yesterday was a day of celebration, with Shelly turning the ripe old age of 34. Something like 13 years ago, when I turned 25, she wrapped my presents in paper that said "Happy Birthday, O Ancient One."

While packing to move to the Philippines, I actually came across a sheet of that paper, one that I stored away for future use. I didn't bring it with me, but if we're back home next November, "O Ancient One" wrapping paper would be perfect for her 35th.

From the sounds of things, Shell had a good birthday celebration at work, complete with a surprise birthday party and, as she pointed out at least three times, "balloons with [her] name on them."

Shelly celebrates with tacos, beer, personalized balloons and Denver Broncos-colored combs.

I made tacos for dinner with homemade tortillas -- simple, but her request -- and a chocolate cake for dessert, and we'll go out for dinner this weekend, perhaps to Italianni's to hear their birthday song again. All in all, she had a good birthday, I think.

Our tacos were completed with some Herr's salsa that we bought locally, imported from Nottingham, Pennsylvania, all of 20 miles or so from Brad and Laura's house. Mom, Jerry and I even took a tour at the Herr's plant a year or so ago.

My day began with the realization that I had not gone to the supermarket last night to buy hamburger, cheese and lettuce for the tacos, which meant that I would need to make a trip to the store before making dinner. This was not a problem, but fixing our DSL connection (PLDT never did show up; I fixed it myself) and getting Vonage set up again took the better part of the cool part of the day, which meant I was off to the supermarket in the midday sun.

Walking to the store is nothing new -- I lived in Washington for more than a year without having a car -- but my sedentary suburban lifestyle means it has been a while since I've walked for actual transportation purposes. We're only 20 minutes from the gate, and there's a store ten minutes from there, so it really wasn't a bad walk there and back. Including shopping, the whole outing only took 80 minutes. But that doesn't mean I didn't try to use it to my advantage when Shelly got home.

"Wow," I said. "I walked all the way to the store just to celebrate your birthday tonight."

"It only took you an hour," she said.

"Yeah, but it was uphill both ways, and there was three feet of snow on the ground," I said.

"More like 100 percent humidity, wasn't it?"

"You're right" I said. "What I would have given for three feet of snow."