you're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older

This was the year that marked my transition into "thirty-something" territory. I had thought about letting it pass quietly, like last year. I did get flowers from my parents, delivered to my office on Friday, which was a really nice surprise. And my desire to drag my husband out against his will to do something geeky won out over wanting to let the day go uncelebrated, so we made plans with M to go to the zoo on Saturday. It was a nice day, if a little on the sweltery side. We got to do and see pretty much everything. Then again...it isn't a very big zoo. (Pictures will follow at some point.) Then we went out to dinner, and had a very enjoyable time. That night I watched Pride and Prejudice (twice), and went all swoony over Matthew Macfadyen.

M's present to me this year was a zombie-fiction anthology, for those dark nights when I really want to stay awake in the midst of paranoid insomnia until daylight. I had bought myself a couple of books earlier in the week, and decided to start with Chuck Palahniuk's Invisible Monsters. I didn't find out until after I started into it that this is considered his weakest novel. It's also vapid, gratuitous, meandering and surprisingly dull for something so in-your-face and graphic - full of pandering shock-value and little else. All in all, I found not a lot to redeem the book, so I doubt I'll be going out of my way to read anything else by Palahniuk anytime soon. (The best line came early on, three pages into chapter one: "Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism." - that was the highlight and it all went sour from there.) I was reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy earlier this evening, but I quickly realized that it may get a little...sad. So I've switched over the Dean Koontz's most recent continuation of his Odd Thomas character's story, Odd Hours. Nice and light and mindless popular fiction. Just what I need.


My husband's birthday is this weekend, and he'll join me in the ranks of the no-longer-in our-twenties. The plan is to have my husband's family over on Sunday for gift-giving and preparation of charred consumables. And alcohol. And cake.

Next week is my son's last in kindergarten. We think we'll take him to play putt-putt golf when school lets out on the last day, which is something he's been trying to talk us into for about a year. It's what we promised him if he mastered the 2nd grade sight-word (what we used to call "vocabulary") list, so it seems like the best time. The following week he starts summer camp (where the fees jump to almost double), and we have plans to go see Wall-e at the end of June and a family reunion to look forward to in July.