So yesterday was my happy happy birthday filled with birthday goodness! It wasn't as full as most birthdays in terms of doing lots of different fun things, but I had a good time anyway.

I got up early, because I wanted to go into the city to see the photographic exhibition at the Jewish Museum, and, not surprisingly, they close early of a Friday.

I talked on the phone to Mom and opened my presents, which were the Buffy second season DVD set from Beth, Buckaroo Banzai from Lucy, and Tam Lin from Amanda. From Mom I got a pair of extremely comfortable white pants (are you hinting that you want me to become a nurse?), a blue flowered shirt, white sneakers, red sandals (how many pairs of Birks does a girl need? Four, seemingly), my father's copy of Orpheus Descending given to him by Tennessee Williams (but not autographed), and an interesting trifecta of a skin clearing system, a hair removal system, and some diet bars.

According to my mother, I am apparently fat, hairy and covered with pustules. Thanks, Mom!

Of course, there were also the gifts that I had gotten for myself!

I wandered into Virgin the other day, and immediately found out that the coupon book they had given me on my last visit had expired, and neither could I find a single DVD that I was looking for, but they were having a $10 sale on select DVDs. And that was good enough for me.

I got No Way Out, The Way of the Gun, The Langoliers, L.A. Story, The Blair Witch Project, Hoosiers, Moonstruck, and Singles.

When I got out of the store I had forgotten half of what I had gotten, and decided to surprise myself. The best purchase was Moonstruck, since I already own it and they came out with a version with a commentary track, and I loathe buying things twice. But for $10, I'll buy it twice.

Afterwards, it was time to go to the Jewish Museum, but I thought that perhaps I didn't want to do the rushing around thing, and decided to have a slower-paced day.

I watched TV, I puttered, and I planned a couple of movies to see, emailing Tracing and Sara to ask if we could meet for dinner a little later than we had planned. I left the house not so much on time, and wouldn'r have been able to make the first movie, so I decided to go shopping instead.

For Christmas, the controller at work had given all of us in Accounting $25 Macy's gift cards, and I'd never used mine, so I decided to use it on a new scale, since I am going back on Weight Watchers on Monday, but I'm going to do the online thing, not meetings, and thus need a scale.

I found the scale section in the basement, a tiny corner away from everything with a very unhappy clerk. Clearly, he was thinking about how much fun they were having in the rest of the basement, there are probably parties going on in the cookware section, and here he was, all alone in the Scale Ghetto.

I found a scale on sale for $19.95, not digital, but with a great big easy-to-read dial, and by Healthometer, which is the scale brand. I took it to the sad sad clerk, who told me that I needed to give him $7. "Why is a $19.95 scale $32?" I asked, curiously. I didn't hear that the sales tax had been raised to 65%, but hey, cigarette are $7 a pack now, so I suppose anything could happen.

He looked at the scale display, and we both realized that there were two signs on top of the same pile of scales, and the pile actually was the $29.95 scale. "But where are the $19.95 ones?" He glanced around sadly, but could find nary a one. I looked under the table and found one immediately, but I am not filled with sadness at working in the Scale Ghetto and missing out on all the fun, so I had the energy to look under the table without bursting into tears.

He, with great dolor, unscanned the more expensive scale and scanned the cheaper on, then put it upside down in a bag so that it could not stand by itself and would always fall over when put down on the ground, and swiped my gift card.

Those gift card are really sneaky. With a paper certificate, they give you change in cash, but with this kind of card with a magnetic strip like a credit card, the change is left on the card. What could I possibly buy in Macy's for three dollars and change?

On my way out, I passed the candy counter, and, realizing the amusing irony of buying candy with the change from a diet scale, I got a hunk of nice-looking fudge. And what was left on the card? Three cents! Score! I rule!

After Macy's, I went downtown to my two favourite stores, Portico and Fish's Eddy.

Portico has been closed the last several times I have gone, I keep having bad luck with my timing, so I really haven't been in quite some time. They sell my favourite line of bath and body products, Tipton Charles, not to mention Island Thymes, though they did stop making the Lemongrass & Lime Leaf line, which made me very sad.

Anyway, I was looking in the back in the bath section, and found nothing but the Portico store brand of products. No Tipton Charles! No Island Thymes! No anything good! Although I had gotten the Portico store brand of soap in the past, and that was swell, I had never tried their shampoos. I asked the salesgirl about Tipton Charles and she said that they had stopped selling them, and only knew of one other store in New York that sold it, and they just went out of business.

So I got the Portico brand. Hey, there was a sale, one free product if you bought two, and it was fantastic smelling lemon verbena, so I got the shampoo, conditioner and bubble bath.

Then I went to Fish's Eddy. I figured that it's my birthday, I deserve a new Cynthia Rowley plate! I've been collecting them since May '99 and have two bowls, two small plates and one big plate. There are six designs: hats, shoes, underwear, ties, people and handbags, and I want one of each in bowls and small plates (big plates only come in one design).

I wasn't one hundred percent certain which designs I had already in which versions, so I got the people small plate, because I knew for a fact that I didn't have it at all. I don't know when I'm going to get more big plates, as they are both more expensive and duller, since there is only the one design. See above.

So next I'll get a bowl, six months from now or so, and hopefully I will remember that the only design that is unrepresented in my collection as yet is hats, but we'll see.

It was a pretty good trip to Fish's Eddy, though, since I usually get just piles of stuff that I don't need and can't afford and don't have room for, and this time I only got four things that I don't need and can't afford and don't have room for--the plate, a big green bowl and two stripey dishtowels on sale.

Then I decided to go to the movies! Gotta go to the movies on the birthday! I went to see XXX, which was surprisingly good. Just big, dumb, silly, loud fun.

I quite agree with Columbine, who stated that XXX is, in fact, a Bond film. Hey, the secret agent good guy has to save the world from an evil genius with an underground lair? That spells Bond to me, baby.

Vin Diesel is one of those people that I find sexy against my will--he really seems like he is just the biggest asshole, but he has pheromones that I react to whether I want to or not. Even after seeing how liver-lipped he is when he kisses the girl, he's like that guy who licked Charlotte's chin in Sex and the City.

In an article in Premiere magazine, the female lead said at one point that she thinks that ol' Vin will be a great director someday, because before the takes he would tell her what her character was thinking and feeling. Now, this is really bad actor manners, and if he was coming up to me before a take and saying, "Now, in this scene your character is torn..." I'd punch him in the face, but considering how bad she was in the finished film, I say thank you, Mr. Diesel, because God only knows how lousy she would have been without your attempting to shove her bodily in the correct emotional direction.

Frankly, the director is fine at pointing the camera at stuff blowing up real good, less good at extracting emotional realities from actors.

Of course, at this point I was done shopping and out of the movies way early and had a ton of time to kill before meeting Tracing and Sara. This is what I get for still not having a cell phone. Ordered, not yet received.

So I went to Barnes and Nobel, and of course I ended up buying a few books that caught my eye. They were I & Claudius: Travels With My Cat, The First Time I Got Paid For It : Writers' Tales From The Hollywood Trenches, and the one that not just caught my eye but grabbed it and refused to give it back again, Vinnie's Giant Roller Coaster Period Chart & Journal Sticker Book, which just made me laugh out loud.

Then I sat in the park for a awhile, finally giving up and standing in front of the restaurant, taking pictures of blurry passersby.

Finally Sara arrived. She was a little early, but I say finally because I was waiting so long. I'm used to being late, so having to wait for people to arrive! Being early is for the birds. Tracing, on the other hand, was actually late, which she always blames on me, but I think that she is really a late person herself, she just feels superior to me because I am usually later.

We were at the rib place at Union Square. I love the rib place at Union Square, the ribs are kickass good, as are the mashed potatoes. We had a swell time, eating ourselves sick, and I don't know how I managed to take as many pictures as I did during the day without shooting a single picture of either of them or the lovely presents they gave me or even me in my pink fluffy party antennae!

Sara got me this great photo album that I was actually looking at at Barnes and Nobel a mere hour before, and photo corners, and tracing got me an address book, presumably so that I will have a place where I can write down phone numbers rather than having to ask for them over and over again, as well as a Little Miss Help gel pack, some tiny super-strong magnets and a neat wire photo holder.

We were really full, but it's my birthday, so I had some pecan pie. And as I told Lucy, birthday calories don't count.

So after a couple of hours of talking, we all went out separate ways. I took the bus uptown, after having a bus driver slam the door in my face and pull away (I'm going under the assumption that he did not see me, not that he hated me and wished I was dead) which was not a very birthday-ish thing to have happen, I went home and was greeted with great joy by the dog, who gratifyingly hurls herself down the stairs with glee when she hears the fence rattle.

And that was me turning 38. Which is a very young age indeed, don't you forget!

Today's horoscope:
Either you or an associate might be too concerned with the bottom line, with getting and having things. Stay moderate and able to relax.

One year ago today:
I've had better, I've had worse, but the fact that, around the middle of the day, all of the tooth pain left my body and went to torture some other poor sod, made it much more wonderful than I could have expected.

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Last Updated Mon 2 September 01:26:09 2001