They Say It's Your Birthday

I celebrated my birthday a couple of days ago. It was a really good day. First of all, I woke myself up laughing! Seriously. I had the most ridiculous dream. I dreamed that it was morning and that the night before Penn had been out drinking with his friends and had come home buzzed. I was lying on the floor complaining to Penn about a friend who was annoying me (sometimes my dreams are incredibly mundane, and pretty much indistinguishable from real life) when Penn came out of the closet and stood over me wearing nothing but a multi-colored beach towel around his waist and an orange and blue owl mask on his face. All I could see through the mask were his puzzled eyes and his mouth, which said, "What in the world possessed me to buy an owl mask?!" And the owl mask was so damn funny that I started laughing. I laughed so hard in the dream that I started laughing in real life, and I woke up to Penn saying, "*A*? *A*? Are you okay? Are you crying?" And then he realized I wasn't crying, I was belly laughing. It was ridiculous. Three days later I'm still laughing every time I think about that owl mask! I even drew a sketch of it, so that Penn could understand why it was so hilarious (unfortunately, the humor of the owl mask really doesn't translate. You sort of had to be there in my head, I guess).
I had intended to just go to campus like normal and do some assistantship work and have a meeting with my friends about a project we're planning, but Penn surprised me by taking the day off from work. Apparently he worked overtime all last week while I was out of town just so he could spend my birthday with me. Isn't that nice?
Since he had taken the day off just for me, I called my friends and rescheduled my meeting so I could have the day off, too. Penn brought me breakfast in bed. Then I opened my birthday gifts from him. We were laughing because the the presents he gave me--all things I had mentioned wanting over the past couple of months--could easily also have been birthday gifts for an eight-year-old: Beautiful Katamari for the XBox, salt water taffy, and a stuffed Domo. (Darn 7-11 and their advertising for 99 cent coffee in a Domo cup. I don't like coffee, but after weeks of seeing Domo on the side of my bus every day I decided I needed a Domo. He's just so cute!) Oh, and I should mention that earlier this week Penn had already given me another birthday present: a hockey jersey, personalized with my favorite number and the imaginary player name "Hotstuff", which I wore that night when he took me to my first pro hockey game (that was really fun, by the way. I'm starting to like watching hockey on TV, but of all the sporting events I've ever watched it was the one that was most notably better live. I think it was something about the sound of the skates and sticks on the ice, and you just can't hear that as well on TV. Plus it's way easier to follow the puck in real life. On TV I always lose it and can only really follow on instant replays). So to everyone who wanted to make sure that Penn was spoiling me on my birthday, rest assured that he definitely did!
Anyway, after I opened all of my awesome presents (My parents and grandparents both sent me some spending money for Europe, and grandma sent me a scarf and hat that she had knit for me, and my parents bought me a photograph of my dog; a professional photographer took it when we were at a party a couple of years ago and she's now selling prints to benefit dog rescue. I think it's pretty cool that my basset is for sale as a print!) Penn and I went out for the day. We took our bikes into the city on the subway and biked to the history museum. Penn had never been there before. I had, but the last time I was there it was the height of tourist season and I'd had to skip half of the exhibits because the rooms were just too crowded. This time I got to see everything I wanted to see. I love museums. It's so soothing, just strolling around looking at interesting things.
After the museum we went to campus, and as we were getting off the subway and locking up our bikes at the rack so we could catch the campus shuttle, we saw a rainbow. I haven't seen a rainbow in a long time. I'm hoping it's a good omen for the coming year!
We were on campus to see Dave Eggers and Valentino Achak Deng, who were giving a talk on What is the What. Penn had read the book last year and was really impressed and affected by it, and I've been meaning to read it ever since but hadn't gotten around to it yet. When Penn found out that Eggers and Deng were going to be talking on campus, I started the book. I didn't manage to finish it before the talk, but I'm almost done with it now. It's well-written, and a very moving story about people and places that are so easily ignored. It's hard to read at times because the subject matter is so disturbing, but it's also hard to put down. It was really interesting to listen to the author and the subject of the book talk about the project and what they are doing now to help the people of Deng's village. Penn and I got really lucky, too. First of all, we almost didn't get into the talk because they had booked the lecture in a room that was too small for the crowd that showed up. Penn and I were almost to the door when they announced that the room was filled and no one else was going to be allowed in. We had stood in line for half an hour to get in, so I was about to get really upset when suddenly a bunch of students came filing out of the room and said, "We were just here to get extra credit. We figure some of you actually want to see the lecture, so we're going to leave." I thought that was really nice that they acknowledged that there were many people in line who were going to be legitimately disappointed at missing the event. People aren't usually that thoughtful! So we ended up getting in and even managed to find seats together. And then, since our seats were at the very front of the lecture hall, as soon as the talk was over Penn was the first person to sprint up to the stage with our copy of the book. So we got to shake their hands and got our book signed by both of them. I have very few signed books because I'm usually too awkward to ask, so I'm glad Penn was with me to ask for the autograph. What a cool birthday present!
We were going to go out to dinner, but we didn't get home from the book talk until after 8:00, so we decided to save dinner for another night later this week. I didn't need to go out to dinner, anyway. It was a perfect day just as it was. Although I have to admit that I think my birthday is a perfect illustration of what a nerd I am. "Hey, it's your birthday. What do you want to do to celebrate?" "Oh, I want to go to a museum and a book lecture! That's my ideal day!" However, we did go over to a friend's house for birthday drinks last night, so rest assured that I'm a semi-normal twentysomething.
It was a happy day, and, what with the rainbow and waking up laughing, an auspicious start to another year of life.