27

You don't know how lovely you are, originally uploaded by Brian U.

Yesterday was my birthday. I had a good one - Brian had a bouquet of flowers delivered to me at work, and then took me out for dinner at Jaroblue.

Jaroblue is on 17th Ave, and we love it. It's a tapas lounge with an amazing atmosphere, friendly staff, and fantastic food. And we feel it's priced pretty well, too.

We had olives, and smoked sturgeon ravioli, and a grilled pear and blue cheese salad, and atlantic char on tomato kasha and spicy green beans. And I had double cream brie for desert, and Brian had carrot cake. And a bottle of Ravenswood Zin along with it all.

So, 27, 27. I'm in my late 20s. And I know how ridiculous it is to be bothered by that, but I can't help it. I'll get over it, I know.

This year I am hoping to get back into running - I dabble in it here and there, but I would like to reach a new level with it. Nothing serious - I'm not competitive in the least. But I would like to challenge myself a bit with it.

Brian gave me a Nike+iPod as part of my birthday present. Basically there's a chip that goes in your running shoe, and a small attachment you plug into your iPod, and it records all your running stats. Speed, pace, distance, time, calories, etc, etc. I haven't tried it yet, but apparently it'll give you verbal coaching if you want it, as well as things like playing one of your chosen 'power songs' when it detects that you need motivation. Then of course you can log in online and see all sorts of charts and stats on your running progress.

I'm a huge nerd in terms of graphs. I want to graph everything. It's hugely motivating - it's trends and progress I can see.

Also this year I hope to get back into my creativity a bit again. Likely through photography... I'd like to get back into some self portraits - I might even try my hand at making up some characters and writing stories to go with. Dunno yet, but I'm feeling very antsy lately in a way that makes me think I'd like to create something new.

We have no travels planned for the year. We have some ideas, but nothing is realistic yet. We do actually have tickets to Burningman, but we're not really sure we'll use them yet. Also in the running, road trips - always road trips. Alberta, BC. Possibly the states. I'd love to go somewhere tropical, Brian talks a lot about Vegas. We'd both love to go back to Europe, but it likely won't be this year. I'd also really like to see some of Eastern Canada. So basically, we have it narrowed down to Earth.

But we also might just focus close to home this year. We're still working on bathroom renovations, and once that's done we're getting really eager to replace floors, and some windows and of course yard work in the summertime...

Work is a little (a lot) stressful at the moment, but I won't go into detail about that here.

I also just got a program for my computer to manage recipes. It seems like a pretty good little program so-far. I just played around a bit with it tonight, but looks like it'll be really good.

I'm tired and need to aim for bed now though. Just wanted to post a little birthday bit.