2004-11-13 - 10:32 a.m.

Here it is bright and not-quite early on a Saturday morning, and I'm sitting here updating my journal and drinking yummy coffee.

Since the last time I've made a real update to my journal, I've celebrated my 33rd birthday, with the last "event" happening today - I'm going to spend the day with Melanie. We're going to go to the Sturbridge Clock and Furniture Outlet, where Mom and I went to get Melanie's birthday clock, so that Melanie can poke around and lust after things, and where I might buy a clock of my own. We'll also eat out at swanky places (lunch AND dinner) and generally have a good time. My only concern is about last night's snowfall (first of the season) but it was shallow enough so that it should melt in the sunshine and wind today.

Let's see. Dad's visit went well. It was good to see him, but as usual, I wish I had a guest bedroom. He was with me from a Monday night through Friday midday, but I worked, and he did stuff on his own, so we didn't actually spend too much time together. We watched some of the World Series together and enjoyed the lunar eclipse.

Had a great time with Mom on my actual birthday, which coincided with Laundry Day. We went out to dinner at a great local place and had just a stupendous meal. The food and service and atmosphere were all perfect and we both really enjoyed it. She shocked and stunned me by giving me quite a bit of money to buy a ring. Ever since she'd had Granny's ginormous diamond solitaire reset and started wearing it in January, I'd been thinking about how unlikely it would be for me to get married anytime soon, and how much I'd like to wear some kind of ring. Just a little something something with some sparkle and flash but understated and discreet. The only problem with that is that nearly all men's rings are hideous. A few men at work have diamond wedding bands, and I'd liked them. So...I poked around Amazon a bit, added a few things to my wish list, and that was that. We talked about it a few times, but only lightly. Anyway, I was really surprised by the gift, and commenced doing research. I went to a lot of local jewelry shops, and did a lot of online research, and determined that online would give me the best deal. I found a store on eBay with 52,000 positive feedbacks (diageminc), found what I wanted, and bought it last Friday, and got it Monday. See it here. I'm so, so happy with it. It's just what I wanted. I'm so eager to show it to Mom tomorrow.

The next weekend, I went out to dinner with my local friends, and surprised them all by buying dinner...I've reached the point in life where it's about the giving, not the getting, and I wanted to show them that I appreciate having them in my life, so I did. It was nice. They protested, but I insisted. It was nice.

And that brings us to today! Time to go shower and get ready to go out.