...first of all, I have to thank everyone for the well wishes on my birthday. Unfortunately they weren't enough to turn the entire day around.

So the alarm goes off at 5am, as usual, and I hit the snooze an obscene amount of times and then turn the alarm off so I can sleep in until DH's alarm goes off. Then I get up and go downstairs to work on the cost data that comes out every Tuesday.

I come to the realization as I make my way down the stairs that the workout the previous day has left me sore. Not stretch it out because I worked those muscles sore, but OMG I can barely walk sore. But hey, it's my birthday and I don't have to go to the gym if I don't want to.

I hate the fact that I have to do any work on my birthday. I should have taken it as a sign when it took 20 minutes on the terminal server to recalculate a file that should have taken 2 seconds to update. And then the file crashed and I had to start over. So a one hour process turned into 4 hours online. Thankfully there weren't major issues with the data or I would have worked a full day and you can bet that I would have asked for Friday off (never mind the fact that I still have to get through a review with the doorknob this morning).

In my email are e-cards and other messages wishing me a happy birthday. There are also messages from people forwarding me a membership request from the testing grounds for The Wagon because for some unknown reason every single member there was made part of the support group. That starts the slow process of changing every single user to a regular member instead of a support member and issuing a message to the community to *not* forward the message because it was a mistake.

B comes down and wishes me a Happy Birthday - the first one in the family to do so. Then DH comes down and wishes me a Happy Birthday. A insists that she wished me a Happy Birthday, but I never heard it. Then I get my present: a copy of a game that I've drooled over from time to time called "Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot". This is where you have a team of cute and fuzzy bunnies and your opponents have cute and fuzzy bunnies and you're trying to kill each other's cute and fuzzy bunnies with a variety of weapons. This was a good thing.

But I knew I still faced something significant - I needed to figure out what was for lunch and for dinner. The day sped by as I watched a couple of movies and cruised the web. Finally, after being hungry for a while DH and I went to a favorite Chinese restaurant. The food was good, as always, but somehow I think it wasn't where I wanted to go. Still, I had no better options that I could think of after we dismissed one that would have been too long a drive to get to in the state of hunger we were in. Afterwards we went to the game store where I bought an expansion for Killer Bunnies (oh, the expansions, I *will* get them all).

So, I watch another movie and DH brings the kids home from YMCA day camp and I try and figure out what to have for dinner. Inspiration hits and I start hunting for a restaurant that I knew to have existed once. It was a favorite Italian place of ours, and they had two locations. The closest one had closed up a few years ago, and I hadn't heard about the other. After a search, I found that they were indeed gone.

DH started musing out loud and mentioned a place downtown that we hadn't been to in awhile, so we got the kids motivated to get dressed and headed out. At 6:45pm. I'm ok with the distance and the late hour because I know they've got kickin' desserts (and I really want something good and sweet). We get downtown and realize that we can't find the place although we're looking in all the right places with the right landmarks. A quick call to 411 doesn't yield a phone number for Palermo's or location and we go to Plan B.

Plan B involves a jump back on the freeway in the direction we had come from to Maggiano's. DH mentions the Cheesecake Factory (which I haven't been overly impressed with lately), and I remember that we could have hit The Old Spaghetti Factory downtown. And so we head on and try to find parking. After a 10 minute cruise around a very packed parking garage we leave it to try the next parking garage at Santana Row. I've commented at this point that we either need to head for A Bellagio (to ensure that they stay in business). I'm also hungry enough to state that the drive through at Burger King is starting to sound good (to which everyone exclaims that that isn't a good birthday dinner for me).

That's when we pass the green and see that Jazz in the Park is going on and I know that I'm not going to be able to eat at Maggiano's without at least an hour long wait. DH asks 'Plan C?' (which is A Bellagio), but I turn him down and notice that it's now 7:40 and insist that we go home and I'll just have cold cereal.

Everyone agrees that that isn't a good plan, but at this point I'm not happy and we're rapidly closing in on bedtime for the kids. So we head home, and I head for the shower. While in the shower I realize happily that those people that raised me have not called to wish me a Happy Birthday. That's when I also realize that my in-laws have not called either. That's the first time that they've ever not called on my birthday. Oh yes, I'm feeling very much like Samantha Baker at this point (and anyone my age should know who I'm referring to).

Meanwhile, while I'm in the shower DH has started sauce and pasta on the stove. Unfortunately for him, I'm not hungry at this point. Disappointment has driven away all thoughts of food and I've lost anything resembling an appetite. This, I assume, does not go over well because B is concerned and unhappy that I'm not eating. A does not speak to me for the rest of the evening, and I don't know if that's because she figured it was better to steer clear or because she simply didn't care. She's 11, at this point I'm figuring that she just doesn't care and was just looking out for her own stomach.

They finish eating dinner while I just sit and read on the couch, and DH comes up and apologizes that they don't have any cake or anything for me and he can run out and get something if I want. I repeat that I'm not hungry, and that it's ok. It's not his fault. I feel bad for him though. I think he really wanted to have a nice birthday dinner and I ruined his effort by not eating, but I really wasn't hungry anymore.

That's when I torture myself and find out who was playing the Jazz in the Park deal that kept me away from Maggiano's - David K. Matthews. No, not the Dave Matthews Band guy, but the other one who plays keyboards and used to play with Tower of Power, and has been backing up the great Etta James for the last 17 years. *THAT* David K. Matthews. I could have just about cried because I wouldn't have been impatient at all sitting around waiting for a table at Maggiano's if it meant that I could have been listening to that guy. The evening was going to end with me watching people get shot on television, but '16 Blocks' didn't engage me at all and I turned it off after 40 minutes and I watched 'Music and Lyrics' instead. DH had suggested putting in 'The Princess Bride' because it was the only thing that he knew would make me laugh (note for the future: 'D.C. Cab' or 'Grosse Pointe Blank' would have worked too).

Someone was cursing my birthday today. I'm almost sure of it. The 4th of July wasn't much better - the steak was too salty (I gave the rest of my piece to B and just ate the baked beans and potato salad), the ribs were undercooked (I really didn't want to put them in the microwave), and I kept missing the little flashes of fireworks in our neighborhood. I commented to the kids that with my luck if I went inside the house the really good fireworks would start. So I went back inside the house to continue reading the 3rd Harry Potter book (I'm re-reading them before the last one comes out), and I heard the crackles and booms. I'm sure it was beautiful, but it wasn't my year to see them.

So, I'm sure that there's at least one person out there with a smile on their face that I had a crappy birthday and 4th and to them I say: Screw off and stop rejoicing in the misfortune of other folks. For the rest of y'all: It's ok. It's just not how I expected my 36th birthday to be. I wanted a nice dinner, some nice dessert, good company with my family. Maybe I *should* have insisted on a burger and fries and a milkshake for dinner...

... after all, In-N-Out doesn't seem to have a problem staying in business.