29. So the birthday, although my 29th, on a Tuesday, and on a night before a dental appointment and a math exam (ha!), turned out to be not.. too.. shabby! Chris showed up at home with armfuls of flowers and tiramisu. We ordered Thai To Go. We watched The Simpsons & Seinfeld holdin’ hands. Chris chased Sebastian around the house and made me happy.

Before Chris got home, we were talking on the phone and he asked if I had gotten my gift yet. “Gift?” (For the record, he already gave me a gift, two weeks ago!) “Yeah, on the kitchen island. A re-gift.” I walked into the kitchen, where I saw the bag that I knew contained a bottle of Jack Daniels. “Oh, wonderful – I’m getting whiskey!” Instead, inside I found a picture of us Chris had printed and framed, along with my Winnie the Pooh “You’re 2(9)!” card, which contained my…..

TICKETS TO GO SEE BILLY JOEL!

He’s in concert here in February, and I wanted to go so bad. Sadly, the tickets went on sale on, like, December 29th. This was when my bank account was in the red, so I couldn’t buy the tickets. Every day since, I’ve been hitting “Snooze” on my Outlook alarm to “Buy Billy Joel tix!” while kind of avoiding it because I figured they were sold out by now. And I was right – he had to pay twice face value of the tickets so we wouldn’t get nosebleeds. How’s that for sweet?

I’m really excited. I’ve loved Billy Joel forever, and he’s one of the very few folks I’d like to see in concert (others: Dixie Chicks, Beatles – heh).

Then Chris helped me understand something that was frustrating me in math. After he went to bed, I got back to work on my math with Oreo purring on my lap.

Before I went to sleep myself – well after midnight, with the alarm set for 6:30 – I took another look at my birthday card (“Pooh thinks twoenty-nine is a fun thing to do!”) and had to smile at what a sweetheart I’ve managed to find for myself. :)

By the way, that picture up there is the first of a 365 project I am going to try to do. A picture of me, every day, until I turn 30! In a year. I’m turning 30 in a year. Jesus.  ¶ 10:56 AM