Celebration to excess

Yesterday was my birthday (hey! Where's my present??), and I had not one, not two, but THREE pieces of cake. It's a bit much, don't ya know?

Cake number one: Student made. She made it for me so we could have it during their final presentations yesterday. Yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Tasty. The other students in the class were much appreciative of it - they swarmed around it like moths to a lightbulb. Or whatever metaphor you wish. Sorry, simile. Mrs. Green would be so embarrassed. She was my 12th grade English teacher. She was awesome, by the way.

Cake number two: As part of department celebration. Birthdays here are not so much about the person whose birthday it is, as they are about the opportunity to eat cake. The fact that it was my birthday was just an excuse for incredibly rich chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. Again, tasty. (Hard to go wrong with chocolate)

Cake number three: With my string quartet. At least that followed a good 2 hours of music playing, and Schubert too, which hopefully burned a bunch of calories. The Schubert was basically one hour of non-stop playing. So i don't really feel guilty about that last piece of cake, but I definitely feel decadent. No more cake for me for a while, I think.

The cool thing is with the three cakes, I got serenaded three times. No, I lie. Four times of "Happy birthday". How's that for a celebration???

By the way, if you were hoping for some kind of reflection now that I'm firmly entrenched in my 30s, you can forget it. I am not feeling very reflective at the moment (in fact, I think the Schubert may have done me in ... my arm is killing me. One shouldn't really take on Schubert like that without working one's way up to it).


China countdown - I leave a week from today. I have my shots, I have all my luggage (I think), and I'm collecting the toiletries I might need. I think. I've got a 1 gigabyte memory card for my camera, so I'll take tons of pictures, I promise.