Happy Birthday To Me..;-)!!

I am 28 years young now.

I have never really given much importance to my birthday. Every year my birthday came and went, but I never got excited - it was just another day.

But this year was different, more so because my own perception changed a bit. A couple of days before my birthday I sat down and tried to think about why I don't really celebrate my birthday, and why, on the other hand, just about everyone gets super excited on their's. By definition birthdays are supposed to be special, and I decided to make my own birthday (this year) worth something, if not special.

To start with, I bought myself two shirts. Giving gifts to myself was strange - I do buy stuff for myself all the time, but there's never a "special" reason. I usually buy stuff either when I really want something or when my brain goes for a holiday.

I must mention that I now share my birthday with a two year old girl who happens to be my colleague's daughter. Now that's really an amazing feeling - two people, from different generations (!), born on the same day. This is what excited me, and perhaps added a little bit of "specialness" to my birthday. I made sure I bought gifts for her too - a Webkinz pug, and a t-shirt and shorts. Now shopping for her clothes was amusing because I have never stepped into the kids' section of a store before, and this time when I did, I was totally lost. I did not know what to buy, and the ultra super compressed size of the clothes made me laugh. But I shopped for her the way I shop for myself - just picked something up, without bothering too much about style, color and all that jazz.

I took cookies(5 dozen!) for my colleagues at work. Some of them even sent me a personal Happy Birthday email, which was really nice. My colleagues from Vet Med took me out for lunch, and Dr. Roth insisted on paying for mine- he said it was tradition. Later in the afternoon, they had cookies too, and all of them sang the Happy Birthday song which was a totally awesome feeling. When they were singing I tried to remember the last time I had heard that song being sung for me - It was so many years ago.

I was generally happy. It was a very nice feeling. But the best was yet to come.

Andrew invited me over to his house in the evening. When I reached his house, I was really really surprized to find out that Andrew and Sarah had cooked for me - and it was not something ordinary, it was something that I really really like - Falafel and Hummus! And there was turkish salad too! I swear I could have finished everything on that table for two reasons - I was really hungry and everything was uber delicious. Also , the fact that both Andrew and Sarah "invested" so much energy and love into making stuff for an ass like me, actually added to the taste. I did not know that Andrew had invited more friends over! Travis and Lisa showed up very soon, and Travis's usual funny antics made me laugh non-stop.

Then the cheesecake came - that Sarah had made, and then they all sang the Happy Birthday song for me again! The cake was (and still is) just out of this world! Absolutely delicious to the power of n. Sarah was kind enough to let me take the rest of the cake home with me.

The grand finale to this truly great show was at Old Maine, where Andrew bought us a beer sampler - 8 different kinds of beer in small glasses.

And the birthday was a success, thanks to the so many wonderful people I met this year, especially Andrew.

Also, I must mention that I received this "beautiful" greeting card from Kedar, which was a really nice surprise. I was so not expecting it, and it just made my day so special. It really feels nice to know that people care and appreciate your presence in their lives.

If only all of us could do something to make others smile.

So that is that - and once again, thanks to all you lovely people out there, I am 28 years young.

I Don't Want To Work At Dunder Mifflin...

I kind of have always liked The Office but never really followed any season because I have always been too busy dealing with South Park, and Two and a Half Men.

Recently I laughed my lungs out when all my office mates watched two episodes of The Office in the conference room of our department. You know how it is with funny movies/tv shows - when too many people watch something of that sort, funny suddenly becomes funnier.

Well, I decided to give The Office some attention. Right now, I am performing my weekly, saturday night ritual of drinking beer (6 pack is so easy) - but instead of watching the usual movie from the library or Netflix, I am watching The Office online, and boy, Am I loving it!

But really, the presence of an asshole like Michael Scott in the office can be absolutely brutal - I for one, would probably quit my job and perhaps talk myself into doing something totally unchallenging and boring, just to avoid an assholic boss like Michael Scott. But I think the reason why this show is such a big hit is because most of Michael Scott's actions are just gross to the power of n - most of the viewers know that what he does is really not possible in the "real world" (as my statistics professor would say), and that is why it becomes absolutely funny.

I am drunk and I think I make no sense whatsoever.

I Love Her..I Love Her Not

Yesterday was perhaps the first saturday when I sat at home the entire day (well, I did go out to get myself a Subway sandwich). Since I had to kill time somehow, I decided to watch movies, and ended up watching four.

The movies I watched were Kamikaze Girls, Enemy At The Gates, National Lampoon's Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj, and Amelie.

And then I fell in love.

Some of you may not know but I have a thing for girls with short hair - I find them cute. I go absolutely crazy when I see a girl like that. My brain goes for a holiday, and my heart starts to smile. The damage is doubled if the girl has a very very cute smile...just like Amelie.

Watching Amelie was deja vu all over again. I was in a similar situation 10 years ago - when I had fallen in love with Meg Ryan. Internet in those days was a new and expensive concept, and every month I ran up my telephone bill high, downloading pictures of Meg Ryan. My dad always got mad, but then I was pretty sure that I would have gotten slapped if I had told my dad how much I loved Meg.

So well, the same thing happened last night. I totally fell in love with Amelie, and throughout the movie I could not help wondering how cute she was, and that what would I have to do to get a girl like her. I kind of swallowed my pride for a moment and decided to hunt for a girl like her. Life can be a blessing if spent with a girl like Amelie, I thought. Her presence would bring a smile to my face, I thought. Spending the rest of my life with such a pretty yet sensible girl would make my existence worthwhile, I thought.

The movie ended,...

..and I finished my third beer and slept.

I got up this morning at 11:30, and smiled. The effect of last night's beer had totally vanished from my body, and here I was wondering if I could have gotten up at 11:30 if I were married. The answer was clearly no. I thanked God for my singlehood, made myself a cup of tea, and spent of the rest of the day doing absolutely nothing.

Is This What You Think?

Little Sister blog saw a lot of action in the last few days, and would (hopefully) continue to see more action in the future. Manoj and Kd volunteered to contribute to the blog - and they have already posted some very nice pictures with captions that would perhaps help you understand life better. Okay, gross exaggeration here, but that's the concept behind Little Sister blog - to capture simple, weird, exaggerated, difficult, complex, beautiful, dramatic, subtle, and whatever concepts of life and describe them in our own words. This idea can either be appreciated or ridiculed - doesn't really matter. But what matters is that we all have different thought processes. What comes to your mind after looking at a picture may be completely different than what comes to my mind. You can either appreciate my perspective towards life, or ridicule it totally. But again, the message to be conveyed here is - we don't think alike.