i'm the same age as jesus now...

... when he was at his coolest

07.09.05

Another year older... and still looking pretty good, I think. And yes, I'm in my birthday suit.

I think I was still trying to decide what to wear, and thought to myself,

"Hey, I should capture this moment on film! Let me scamper nudely into the office and get a photo-recording device!

"Hell, I'll document as much of the day as I can remember to document with my newish digital camera!

"But first, I must pose naked in the bathroom in front of the mirror a bunch of different ways until I catch the most flattering light possible, because bad lighting makes me look goofy, and then document how cute I look today!'"

And yes, I'm that vain. But, fuck all, it's my birthday. Besides, naked is the new black, and it's all the rage in Paris.

So, Tifling and I had lunch at a restaurant somewhere downtownish, just south of the river, called Aria.

The food at Aria is sort of global-fusion, although they call it 'Culturally-inspired, and comfortably American.' Case in point, they serve naan bread and a quad of dipping sauces (a spiced cashew butter, almost a tzaziki, a hot chili sauce, and an herb/oil mix) instead of a ramekin of butter and the traditional basket of sliced baguette.

I had an oven-baked salmon fillet crusted with sorrel, served with a tomato and canellini bean salad, and a nice glass of Riesling, which was even good with dessert. Tif had an asparagus salad and a tuna dish that was not quite tartare.

For dessert, she had lemongrass creme brulee with passionfruit granita, and I had a quartet of sorbets -- green apple, cherry, coconut, and tangerine.

They even have those yummy little mints that I like, sort of like the candies that Atlantique used to have before it closed. (My pillaging the candy dish up front and in the powder room everytime we went there probably didn't help their bottom line.)

I'd recommend Aria, definitely for lunch. Can't tell you about dinner, but if lunch is any indication, I'll bet the food is good for dinner, too.

Then we walked a bit, crossing a bridge and walking past an art fair of some sort. There was sculpture and stuff.

Our destination was a movie theater downtown, where we went to see War of the Worlds. It was okay.

Post-movie, we went to H&M wherein Tifling waited patiently while I stood in line forever to buy new black t-shirts for work. I got 4, and have now replaced 4 of my rattiest work t-shirts.

After that, we went to the Sanrio store that I never found on my own, that fateful Sooperbowl Sunday.

Then we drove to Soldier Field, parked the car, and went to a Chicago Fire game, which was my first professional soccer match ever. It didn't start until 7:30pm, so while we covered ourselves in sunscreen before entering the stadium, it wasn't necessary. Other than needing sunglasses to block errant light, we were good. I kinda wished we had bugspray because of the gnats, but they weren't the biting kind. And since Willybean and Tifling have season tickets in the Cadillac Club section, we had righteous good seats.

Everyone around us was eating disgusting greasy stadium food, and all I could smell was french fries. I kept complaining about the french fry smell, and Tifling finally asked me if I wanted french fries. I told her yes, so she went and got us both chicken finger baskets with honey mustard sauce and greasy tasty french fries.

They've got a fan section that's fucking nuts, in a good way. The entire game, a guy was beating on a drum, and all of them were cheering and chanting en masse. When the Fire scored a goal, as a group, they held up a giant Chicago Fire flag that covered the entire crowd in that section. Clearly, a crazy concerted effort. And when the teams switched sides, and the goalie for the Revolutions would do something, the entire section would jeer at him and call him an asshole. As a group. Crazy.

To their right, which you can't see in this picture, there is another group of crazy-assed fans that have a banner with StrongBad on it, proclaiming MAXIMUM FIRE (? I think it said FIRE, but it definitely said MAXIMUM and had StrongBad) on it.

One row down from us, and a few seats to my left, there were these chunky people that didn't seem to do anything more strenuous than sit there in the balmy, cool evening breeze, sweating profusely. You'd have thought it was like 110 and midday instead of low 70's at dusk. Both of them had those ridiculous little battery-operated fans, that they kept aiming at their faces and necks. It was easy to mock them.

After the Fire won the game - 1 to o, we drove to Andersonville and went to this little place called Slice of Heaven, where we split an apple pie tart and a scoop of cinnamon ice cream. While we were waiting for pie, I checked my messages, and found a birthday greeting from Meredith, and another from my family. In established tradition*, my family waits until almost 10pm to call me, but at least they called. I had to return their call on Tif's phone, because mine was d-e-a-d dead.

Because it was late, Tif took me home, where I ate the rest of the pie that we'd had at the restaurant -- I'd taken it to have for breakfast the next day, but was feeling peckish a couple of hours later.

All in all, it was a pretty great day. The only suck part was that I lost my 94-cent camera case, which I now have to go out to Wal-Mart to replace. (I don't mourn the actual loss, I'm just grumbly because Wal-Mart is inconvenient to shop at from where I live.)

To whatever end, I had a great time, and can't wait to do it again next year.

Well, maybe I don't relish the idea of turning 34, but still. Days that great are hard to come by sometimes.
..........
*My first birthday here, I went to Prodigal Son w/Meredith, Good Mike, and Rockstar Daniel, enjoying Malibu & pineapple juice, which everyone else had to buy for me because the police took my license the day before when they gave me a $75 ticket for having a vanillaroma air freshener hanging from my rear view mirror -- seriously, that's all I did wrong.

Instead of popcorn or peanuts, because it was Wednesday, the bar served bottomless baskets of deep-fried bacon. We also had delicious "better than sex" cupcakes that Rockstar Daniel made me, even though he'd only met me a day or two before. (To this day, I am still holding his pyrex baking dish hostage. He's gotta get it back in person, you see.)

At 10pm or so, I had to step outside to take a call from my mom, wishing me happy birthday, because it was too damned noisy in the bar.

As an aside, Progidal Son no longer exists because it burned down.

Probably a grease fire or something.