kismet09

It's weird having a birthday on a Saturday without making any concrete plans for a celebration. On a work day, you work for most of the day, and only really think about festivities for the evening. On a Saturday, you have all day to sit around and be birthday-ish.

My birthday ended up being the whole weekend, which was awesome. It started with dinner on Friday night at anneke jans, the one fancy restaurant in downtown Kittery. It exceeded my expectations with excellent service and food. I started with a raspberry lime rickey laced with vodka and fresh berries. the butter with the bread that was served was very rich and tasty; even the free food that some restaurants don't think much about was notable. We also started with a pate that was freshly made that day - I think it was beef, calves' liver and pork, wrapped in bacon - comfort food at its best. Tim had a chilled gazpacho-y soup that tasted like summer in a bowl, followed by some concoction of things I didn't really try so I can't report on. I had a bibb lettuce salad with spice rubbed bacon and pickled shallots. I have recently developed a love of sweet pickles, and the sweet-tangy shallots were a perfect complement to the soft, subtly flavored lettuce and the crispy thick-sliced richly-spiced bacon. There was just enough vinaigrette to pull it all together. My dinner was a giant steak and an even huger basket of paper-thin fries. For dessert, I had the best bread pudding I've had in awhile, and Tim had a blueberry/blackberry cobbler. So good. Fresh whipped creamy goodness.

Other than that dinner, I basically got to dictate what we did and when and Tim happily did it. Go to the mall? Sure, honey! Go to Maine Diner for breakfast? Sure, honey! Sit on the couch and do nothing? Excellent idea, honey! It was pleasing. I wish I had been well enough to go down to Boston and see people, but it was probably better to stay close to home. joey came by and helped feed my scrabble addiction, and even though I lost three of four, it was a much better set of games than the ones I played at the end of the Maine tournament. This coming weekend, the fesitivities continue with