B-irthday cele-bro-tions!

it was aaron's birthday on thursday!

i had a plan.

thursday, september 20

thursday itself was pretty meh, unfortunately. aaron ended up going to a lecture with corey + gail, while i went and did my own thing at the gym. turns out, as much as i wanted to spend his birthday with him, i wasn't so much interested in a computer science lecture. apparently, i didn't miss much. i met up with them afterwards in david square and had dinner at the foundry. here, i also would not have missed much. the food itself was decent. i definitely enjoyed my wild mushroom flatbread. unfortunately, the service was mediocre at best. the waiter seemed to have forgotten about our table for awhile, he completely forgot about the appetizer that was ordered, and then seemed completely disinterested in helping us out upon realizing that we weren't there to booze it up. lamesauce.

friday, september 21

shenanigans begin! we went to work as normal. what i sneakily hid was the fact that i was going to be leaving work early to pick up aaron's birthday surprise - one andy spaghettios!!! :D this would've worked a lot better had we not then found out that someone back in madison (who shall remain nameless, but i am still quite angry at) had revealed the secret surprise to aaron a few days before hand. bull. shit. a month's worth of ninja secrecy work, down the drain. brought andy back to the house and opened the door to, "andyandyandyandyandyyy!!!". cue thumpthumpthumping of the birthday boy running to the door. it was adorable. much hugging ensued. corey came over for some pre-scheduled throwing and drills, before we all showered and headed back to cameron ave for dinner and hang out time.

did andy get shorter? | markma.

also, andy got aaron a slap chop for this birthday. first experiment? fortune cookies.

saturday, september 22

my present to the birthday boy - alpine ziplining!!!

up in the white mountains, we went and took a ziplining tour through canopies and down the mountain with the longest zipline spanning about 1600'. it was fantastic. this specific tour also had dual ziplines for you to race each other. i lost the first time to winston. i blame the fact that i got completely preoccupied with the flying part and totally forgot about the "curl up into a cannonball to fly faster" part. don't worry. i got it right the second time when i raced aaron. we flew pretty even - had i had longer arms, we could've higfived - until about halfway. cue the tiny asian cannonball. i won. and celebrated. fistpumping and all. winning!

on the way back, we stopped at the tilt'n diner again. had [too much] delicious food. had a waitress continuously give andy shit throughout the meal. ha.

andy found this cookie on the way - it was bigger than my head.

this is manny.

this is andy licking manny. 

katie zipping away!

the ktoads racing!

andy getting ready to fly. 

birthday boy coming in!!! 

here comes katieeeee!!

sunday, september 23

started the day watching moulin rouge just because, for some reason, we were all in the mood for it all weekend. we soon had to drop andy off at the airport so he could get back to madison. :(

we then went and hung out with john soh who was in town for the weekend with the cmu fifth year trip, and showed him around cambridge/mit. we got all nerdy visiting eero saarinen's mit chapel.

birthday shenanigans ended with a birthday/rosh hashanah dinner at the magic's, more cake and happy family time - a lot of which was spent watching baby phin's antics around the dining room.

i think that can be called a success. take that, "meh"!

next zipline excursion has already been planned for next march, ie. my birthday. interested? hit me up. :)

in case you need persuading, here's video i took during the longest zipline on the tour. enjoy!

day 3: merry christmas!!! :)

days in hk: 3

# of dimsum meals: 3

# of times someone has automatically spoken english to me: 2

# of holiday movies watched: 2 (deck the halls, the holiday)

yet another morning of dimsum with the family. then, as per tradition, went to the matinee performance of the nutcracker at the hong kong cultural centre.

had a super tasty dinner for grandma's birthday. mmm...many photos were taken, dishes were had, comas were induced.

happy 82nd birthday, grandma! :)

[sidenote: blogger, i really hate your blog formatting sometimes. it's messed up.]

happy birthday to...me...?

i'm 22. damn. when did that happen?

i guess it hadn't really it me that i was turning 22 until we were getting ready to head off to some tournament in the fall and at least one of the rookies came and found me at practice to let me know her waiver will be coming in very last minute because she needed to mail it home and have her mom sign the chaperone form [note: only for under 18s]. damn. i'm old.

anyhoo, as per usual, my birthday came and went with pretty much no event. pretty eventless. had a terrible start to the day even before i managed to get some sleep. woke up early to head out to 8:30am practice only to find none but one [and the coaches] had bothered to do the same. thank you for wasting our time. :P sat around a little. waited until my partner for studio came in so we could finalize our board and plot it in time for mid-review in studio at 1:30pm. boring. more stressful than necessary. mid-reviews came and went. i presented and bailed into some other studio/up to the clusters to futz around some more. already exhausted beyond belief, i headed up to geagle to restock up on the greens for Puppy dearest. stopped by a couple of stores to search for that ever-evasive winter aviator hat that i've been looking for. no such luck. headed home to drop stuff off and grab my computer gear to head out to anna and john's for some good ol' take out thai food. delicious. guess it serves as some semblance of a birthday meal. no cake. but that's okay. got to get my new laptop, a birthday present from the parents, with rhino. meant to get other stuff too, but that shit fell through. now i'm back here. in my apartment. remember that i still need to pack, clean up the apartment, feed the bunny and study for a quiz for which i have no idea what to study all tonight since i then take the quiz tomorrow and then hope on a bus to the airport, which would then take me to hop on a plane out of town until the end of spring break.

so all in all, not a great birthday. could've been better. thought for once, there might be more to it. but oh well.

but man! spring break!


so here's the plan:
mar. 4-8 - boston, ma. with my B having the best date and birthday weekend ever.
mar. 8-11 - brunswick, ga. for high tide. i'm excited. three full days of sun, sand, ultimate and partying. baller.
mar. 13-14 - philly, pa. for philly classic. again, excited. this should be fun. and new. and challenging. all good things.

consensus = awesome. i plan on coming back to pittsburgh tanned, sunburned, sore, grassburned, bruised...and grinning like an idiot. fingers crossed this actually happens.

wish me luck! :)

my new pooter! :) all new and shiny...and now covered in stickers.