my super sweet 29

Today is my birthday! Despite the fact that I'm a little freaked out by turning 29 today, I still love my birthday. I love the time of year of my birthday, I remember having to shovel snow one year out of our driveway so people could come to my birthday party. It's the day after Valentine's Day, so when I was growing up, I would always think that all of the Valentine's decorations in the store were for me. My mom always made me a heart shaped chocolate cake. I remember thinking how cool it was that my mom could make a cake in the shape of a heart. As I got older, and Valentine's Day was about more than little paper cards passed around at school, it has never mattered that much whether or not I had a Valentine, or if he did or didn't do something special for me that day, because the next day is always my birthday. It's like a pre-birthday celebration.

This Valentine's Day was quite lovely, actually. Cute Tony was, in fact, very cute. I have received flowers from him twice this week. Beautiful purple orchids when I got back from the cruise and a huge bouquet of red tulips for Valentine's Day. We ate dinner at a very adorable Italian restaraunt called Calavino's in Oakhurst, and I couldn't say anything bad about the sauce or the meatballs or the lasagna (although it could never be as good as mine - as an Italian, I always, always am very criticial of Italian restaraunts). We've only known eachother a few months (since Thanksgiving) but the more I know him, the more I like him. He is genuine and thoughtful and funny and creative and interesting and smart. And cute.

So, tonight for my birthday, after I make it through the work day, I am having dinner with a group of friends at my favorite seafood restaraunt, Six Feet Under. I am so happy that so many people are coming and I can't wait to have shrimp tacos and alcoholic blueberry lemonade...

in the middle of the ocean with lyle lovett

So, I just got back from seven days on a cruise with my mom, oh, and you know, Lyle Lovett, Patti Griffin, Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin, Brandi Carlile, and Shawn Mullins just kind of showed up. So there we were, in the middle of the ocean, with some pretty legendary musicians. It was also amazing to me how many other people I ended up knowing on the boat - lots of Atlanta musicians and other musicians I met while working at Eddie's Attic, people from home that work for and volunteered with Sixthman, the company that chartered the cruise, and totally randomly, my friend Jenn Hobby from Q100 and her husband Ryan. Ryan plays with Sister Hazel and has played on the Rock Boat cruises that Sixthman also does. It was quite funny because Jenn and I were trying to schedule a meeting and discussed how we couldn't meet that week because we would both be on vacation, and then ended up on the same vacation. Small world. Stranger still, I went to aerobics class last night, and who ended up being in class with me? Jenn. Extremely small world.

The cruise was great, I was really in need of being away from everything for a while. Of course, on a cruise, you are really, really away from everything. Cell phones and internet cost like $7 a minute, so unless you have a lot of disposable income, you're pretty much cut off from the world. Every night we had another amazing concert to see, and every now and then you'd have a sighting of one of the big performers on the boat. We watched Shawn Colvin playing black jack and try to hide under a hat and glasses from her weirdo fans. It didn't work. My mom turned into a huge Shawn Colvin fan on the boat, bought all of her CD's, and then ended up bumping into her in the bathroom and again in the newstand at the Miami airport on the way home.

The concerts were great, the weather was beautiful, the islands we visited were tropical, and really the only thing that wasn't great was the food. Apparently they had just wrapped up the John Mayer "Mayercraft" cruise before we got on the boat, and some interesting photos of John Mayer on his cruise have been circulating on the internet...

That is Mr. Mayer, on the Lido deck of the same cruise ship I was on, just days before we arrived... Lyle Lovett didn't offer this kind of entertainment on his cruise.

And here is the amazing Brandi Carlile singing "Follow" on the boat...

collecting

My mom always told me I should collect something. She collects antique plates, pottery (mostly vases for Japanese flower arranging), angels. I have never quite picked up this habit. I do have a lot of stuff, and there are clearly some things my eye is drawn to. To the disdain of my roommate, I have a compulsion for obnoxious floral prints. I also have kind of a bizarre menagerie of little religious figures mixed with random things, like a little Easter bunny, a George Bush stress ball with a giant head, a wicked witch of the west doll I got from a McDonalds happy meal. There's a whole article on collecting here. I really like this collection of train cases...