Happy Birthday to ME

Yesterday was my birthday. With a party still to look forward to on Friday, this feels like my birthday week :D

Yesterday was fabulous. I have entered the fun forties. I say fun because that's how it feels. It's in contrast to when I turned 30, which seemed more ominous, a mark of no longer being twenty something. I even had the thought yesterday... I'm just 10 years away from being half a century old. How cool is that?? To think that in 10 years I will have been alive for half a century. Seems amazing.

Yesterday at work one of the teachers brought me balloons early in the morning. Black and turquoise and purple. I LOVED the colors, and the large one had all three colors with 40 in sparkly mylar. I dressed up, and wore my gold tiara. Kids all day wished my happy birthday. My class sang to me. Coworkers presented me with a card and collected money like we do for everyone in our grade level. My old kindergarten mentor came for the day, and taught my kids the story of the little red hen. It was just a great great day.

Last night B took me out Fogo de Chao, a brazilian meat / cowboy place. There is something highly decadent about the endless parade of men bringing fire-cooked meat to your table on huge skewers. Add to this 2 glasses of Macallan's 18 year old scotch, and I didn't think the evening could get any better. But it did.

When they brought the dessert menu, B looked through it and commented on how much the Louis Tres had gone up (Louis XIII cognac) in price. Apparently last year it was $109 an ounce, and now it was almost double that. This is a cognac that is over 100 years old, and the ultimate of all cognacs. Smooth and fragrant, light and heady. B said it was too bad it was so expensive, that he'd tried some 8 years earlier and it was amazing. He said he'd been planning on getting me some for my birthday, but now seeing the price he felt like a cheapskate.

This man is one of the most generous, smart, capable friends in my life. I in NO WAY would ever have put the label cheapskate with him, and told him so- noting all the things he was doing for my birthday (which I won't go into here). He's definitely not the frugal Scot that M is.

Then he said, "What the hell" and ordered an ounce. We shared it, and I could not get over how incredibly lucky I was. He said I deserved it, because not only could I appreciate it, I was a good person, spent my time helping others, and other great stuff that made me blush. I truly think he's the only person in my life that would say I deserved to try a cognac that cost $190 an ounce. Of course, I am probably spoiled now for all other cognacs.

The happy benefit of all that wonderful food and drink- I slept like a babe.