Everyone I know was Born in February

Well, almost.

My roommate and I take [our] birthdays pretty seriously and we like to extend our celebrations over the course of the surrounding days, like Mardi Gras. With his 22nd birthday coming up on Tuesday, some friends and I got together last night to celebrate and we went to a restaurant in Central Square called Green Street, where everything from the hazelnut and honey-stuffed sardines to the bacon cheeseburger and our manhattans were all-encompassingly satisfying. Really, it was the kind of food that left all of us happily sighing and leaning comfortably against the back of our chairs as if we'd just done something extraordinary, like build a barn, not simply devour an exquisite meal. Best of all, the wait staff let us take our time eating and laughing and (in my case) changing from my heels to flats at the booth even though the restaurant was packed with couples celebrating an early Valentine's Day. Already I'm looking forward to my next visit to Green Street- and I don't even like eating meals.

Last year, my roommate (who's a twin) was sent this giant banner to commemorate the big day from his father, who insisted we hang it in the kitchen. Sadly, this year we are sans banner.

The evening took a strange twist, however, when dinner was punctuated by a series of text messages from my parents, who are going through some mysterious middle-aged moment of wanderlust. Like the couples at our neighboring tables, they too chose to celebrate Valentine's Day early and did so by visiting the Minneapolis Convention Center to check out the RV show.

I cannot stress how weird this is- like, my parents abhor camping; though they aren't by any means flagrantly extravagant, they are not prone to roughing it and generally don't associate with the kind of people that come to mind when thinking of an RV park (which, in my RV novice imagination include people who want to smoke inside, people who want to bring their numerous children on vacation, people who want to bring their [giant, shedding] dog, cat, or parrot on vacation, and people who never want to not be on vacation).

What began as a conversation that went something like, "Haha, wouldn't it be funny if your mother and I bought an RV and traveled the country? Ha..." suddenly morphed into a hurried text message declaring "We bought a Mercedes Benz, Great Western RV. I am shocked that your mother came around to my thinking on this. We are going to have some fun now!" accompanied by a grainy cell phone picture of this baby:

And to sweeten the deal, they're going to blog about their cross-country journey for the RV dealer's website. OH, MY GOSH.

Life sure has an unsettling way of getting weirder as we get older and my roommate and I will be sure to toast to this weirdness as we continue celebrating his miraculous birth. HAPPY SUNDAY!

Oh, and HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

The Price of Your Shit

There is something regal about eating alone in a cafe. It requires a sort of poised dignity; you sit with your back straighter, your eyes carefully unfocused and concentrate more on pacing, for your bites are not punctuated by voiced observations or laughter. When you eat alone, the sound of chewing will be heavy in your ears. It'll remind you of that squishing sound your mother's tuna-salad made as she mixed it together with a rubber spatula on Sunday nights. You'd have tuna sandwiches all week at school for lunch and the noise your mouth made chewing those cellophane-wrapped sandwiches was the same as that stirring. You wonder if that's the same sound food makes as it moves through your intestines, as it's broken down by acids and turns into shit.

You're alone and suddenly eating seems foolish. You daintily dab your mouth with a napkin and push your plate, which still has half a frittata on it, toward the center of the table. The frittata was $9.50. $9.50 is the price of your shit. If your mother were here she'd tell you to finish eating; even though you're an adult, she'd scold you for being wasteful. But eating alone has made you tired, each bite is exhausting. Besides, it seems indecent for a woman to finish a meal when she's eating alone, just as it's bad form to lick clean your plate on a first date.

You read a book last summer about the way people eat when they're eating alone. Surprisingly, some people go to great lengths to make themselves a meal. They light candles, open bottles of wine, let them breathe and then pair them with a carefully-prepared dish. Maybe they listen to classical music as they do this, waving their arms like the composer as they orchestrate their meal and work through various courses. When you eat at home, alone, you're lazy like a college-aged boy. You eat a lot of cereal, canned fish and fruit. Once you went the whole summer without using your oven or stove. You remember the words of a friend some years ago- he said, "Eat to live, don't live to eat," and you've thought about this advice often over the years, usually as you're eating rice right out of the pot in which it was made. After a couple forkfuls you put the lid back on and put it directly into the refrigerator with a potholder underneath. It's pathetic, and when friends come over you don't let them open the fridge, or your cupboards, so they don't know how low you've stooped. Idly you'll wonder if these are the typical eating habits of a singleton.

The waiter at the cafe will come over and look concerned, will ask if everything was to your liking and if he can take away your plate. "Oh," you'll say, startled and fumbling to find your voice as if you just woke up, "Everything was great, thank you. Yes, yes, you can take it away." The waiter will smile gratefully and ask if he can get you anything else. You'll shake your head, put on your coat, drop twelve dollars on the table and leave.

Six hours later you'll be hungry again, and when your stomach grumbles you'll wonder, what's the point?

Perpetual Weekends

I live in a state of constant weekend. One day I will probably have a career that will necessitate that I stay in on weeknights and generally behave myself, but presently I'm free to sit at bars talking books and movies and Lady GaGa all night and then sleep until 9:00 (or later...) the next morning. It's almost gotten to the point where I don't know what people do if they stay in for the evening- watch TV, I suppose?

Anyway, last night I had a decadent evening at Ken Oringer's fantastic sashimi bar, Uni in the Eliot Hotel. A good friend of mine is moving to San Francisco and we took advantage of the occasion to feast like kings on our usual seaweed salad, tomato water martinis (they sound weird, but they're actually delicious and, surprisingly, non-alcoholic), vegetable tempura, roasted peppers and a plethora of other delicious foods, the names of which I'm uncertain. Generally I enjoy making decisions for myself, but when I'm at a good restaurant or am in the company of people whose palates I trust, I like my food to be ordered on my behalf. By practicing this method of ordering, I'm exposed to delicious meals that I never would have tried on my own, opting instead for something uncomplicated and familiar. Because my friend is a former employee of Uni we were sent plates of fresh chef-creations including thin strips of raw octopus partially cooked in a hot sesame oil that were just as good as they were beautiful. I just love that, having a chef decide what to feed me! Overall it was a fantastic Sunday night and I'm lucky to be able to sit and drink wine with good friends until midnight rather than tuck myself into bed and set my alarm.

Life, I love you!