A very happy birthday
I'm 37 now. I officially have a salt and pepper beard.
I share my birthday with my mom. I have the honour of being her best birthday present ever. Yesterday we had a delicious paella from my dad's restaurant and saw my parents and my brother and her girlfriend. I made the mistake of eating straight from the paella (yes, the food and it's container are called the same) and lost track of how much I was eating and ended up absolutely stuffing myself. And then came cake.
Today, my actual birthday, was a bit of a disaster. First of all we had an Orange Alert for strong winds, which is my least favourite form of extreme weather. Also, my best friend left buying train tickets to the last minute and couldn't find any, so he had to cancel his visit. Another pair of friends also cancelled because of the strong winds (they are in the middle of building their house and were justifiably scared of leaving it), so we ended up being just me, my wife, my son and a friend. I made pizza for eight adults and we were three 😂
But honestly, I really enjoyed the day. We had good food, great conversation and because we only had one guest, the hosting wasn't stressful (usually making pizzas for 6+ people diminishes my personal enjoyment because it becomes a bit of a job).
Even the change to daylight saving time was nice, because it delayed the sunset and it happened while we had dinner (my son had dinner, I was stuffed, again).
I received amazing presents, the standard combo of books, coffee beans and new underpants. I got:
- Guatemala and Kenya beans from Syra Coffee (from my mother-in-law)
- La Península de las Casas Vacías by David Uclés, a novel set during the Spanish Civil War that I heard great things about (from my wife)
- Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant, a book on the history of Luddism (from my wife)
- The full collection of Low Tech Magazine thematic books/printed articles (they do it better than me) (from my wife)
- There Never Was a West by David Graeber, a collection of essays from the author of The Dawn of Everything, which I'm currently reading (great attention to detail from my friend Juan)
- A set of 3 underpants and summer pajamas, which I actually really needed (from my mom)
- Two bottles of wine, 5 litres of olive oil, cheese and cured ham (from my brother and his girlfriend)
I feel very lucky and grateful to have such great people in my life.