Turning 35!
My birthday was at the beginning of this month – number thirty-five. It was a perfect birthday, truly, in every sense of the word. I flew to San Francisco, and Carrie organized a birthday celebration, with my amazing friends Suzette and Drew, Tricia and James, and Emil.
We started at the Elite Café, a New Orleans themed restaurant that pulled off Creole and the South so much better than Nola in Palo Alto; limited tack, much elegance and what looked to be very tasty food. I settled into Sidecars, and Carrie ordered a plate of horseradish deviled eggs, the creamy egg yolk spiked with horseradish.
After a quick stop at another bar (can’t remember the name), we hit SPQR for dinner. I was really excited – the new "it" place in Pac Heights had just opened, run by the same folks behind A16, one of my favorite San Francisco restaurants. The appetizers were good – shelling beans, sweetbreads, sunchokes and mushrooms, olives and a few others. Sadly, I chose my main dish wrong, one that was primarily oddly shaped pasta mixed with a bit of tomato, tuna and capers; it could have been good, but was just mediocre. Suzette’s calamari was delicious, Drew’s pork was fabulous and Carrie said that her carbonera was also tasty. Win some in the food world, you lose some. The table shared a slightly underwhelming dessert, something resembling a grilled cheese sandwich. A birthday song was required - I made a wish and blew out the candle.
35 is a nice, sturdy, in-the-middle celebratory number. Not like 30 or 40, which tend to be life markers, but still, solid. In the third grade, I had to memorize the multiplication tables, and since, have always been fond of 5 and 7 as multipliers (along with 7 and 8). I thought the equation was pretty to write, pretty to look at, especially once I adopted the European writing standard for 7 (with the line through the stem). I may have been a slightly twisted elementary school student, come to think of it.
I told Aimee - we've known each other since we were 4 - that I realized I was alarmingly close to 40, and am now saying that I need to go to Betty Ford at 50, rather than the previously stated 40th birthday. She wondered where we’ve gone wrong, “I’m pregnant, you’re a drunk…” Truly something to ponder.