Happy Birthday To Me

So, today is my birthday. I've already talked about the present I got (and the amusing way in which it was bought) in yesterday's blog entry. Today I'll talk about the birthday itself. I'll be updating this entry as the day progresses so stay tuned.

My day opens up with the best present possible: waking up next to the beautiful girl who was somehow sufficiently brain-damaged to become my wife. After that a printer is next to nothing.

I woke up long before Joan did, so I spent much of the morning watching her and listening to her snore lightly. I also experimented with moving around and watching her move after me (although this had the side effect of continually shrinking the space available to me on the bed). Finally she woke up and wished me a happy birthday. We then got up.

Joan's mother had been busy. When we got up, we were faced with the traditional birthday...

...noodles. Yes. You read that right. Birthday noodles. You were expecting cake?! Which country do you think I live in again?

In China the birthday tradition is to make a bowl of "long life noodles" -- basically a spicy noodle soup with slices of beef, vegetables, mushrooms and other things (this one had spicy sticky rice dumplings, for example)
-- and, to be strictly traditional, share it with family and neighbours. (We decided to keep it in the family, however. We're not that traditional. Our neighbours aren't Chinese and wouldn't understand the meaning of it anyway.)

That's it for the morning report. Stay tuned as I update my birthday report over the day.

Afternoon update:
Joan had to go to the dentist today to get her braces adjusted, so I was left pretty much alone all afternoon. I tinkered with my printer, mostly, figuring out how to make it do its tricks and such. I also, as an acid test, printed off an e-book I'd been wanting to get run off at a print shop for a while. The new printer is sweet: fast and yet with good quality output. This even though the Linux drivers don't support it fully.

Evening update:
My birthday dinner was delicious. Joan's mother bought some 夫妻肺片 (Lit. "Married Couple Lung Pieces" -- mysteriously named because as far as I know there's no lung pieces in it, nor any married couples), a dish consisting of sliced beef, sliced beef tripe, sliced beef blood vessels, peanuts -- all in a peppery, garlic oil sauce. Other dishes included 腐乳 (fermented "cream tofu"), a marinated tofu and pepper dish, some Chinese cabbage hearts, and fried, spicy fish.

After dinner my friend from SCUM dropped by with his girlfriend. Oh, and a new coffee maker as my birthday present, so now its time to find some decent coffee.

Night-time update:
So, I headed out for my night-time walk and fell into a mud puddle, coming home dripping wet. Fun, fun, fun. Still a decent birthday overall.