As I was saying, before I sidetracked myself, Jeff already has posted about our birthday-related (his) and weekend activities, so you can go read them at his site; I’ll post only any specific comments or amplifications of my own below:

Friday night (Jeff’s birthday eve): Wine tasting, gallery hopping, French dining. I also had the mesclun salade but instead of the steak maison I opted for the tournedos, which was served rare and wonderfully tender. I truly loved Micheline Frank’s artwork at Studio Gallery, and really wish I had a spare $6K with which to purchase the incredible title piece.

Saturday (Jeff’s birthday): flowers, movie, sushi, Freddie’s. As Jeff noted, I went downstairs to pick up the FedEx delivery–when the phone rang from the front desk letting us know that Jeff had a package, he seemed unconcerned and continued to dilly-dally about the house. I knew that the box contained flowers, and wanted to get them out and in fresh water as quickly as possible. So I ran downstairs to pick them up for him while he was puttering in the kitchen.

I must confess that I’m very pleased with Proflowers, which I’ve used on a number of occasions to send flowers to my mother, and which I also used at Easter to send live plants–a Calla Lily to my mom and a miniature rose to Jeff–with great success. The flowers are shipped quickly–shipping from California one day and arriving even in my mother’s small town in rural Virginia the next–and are packaged very well; each rose was in its own vial of water, all were wrapped securely with moist paper covering the buds and plastic around all to keep them from moving about. The package also included food to keep them fresh longer, and instructions on removing the outer “protective” layer of petals from each individual rose. And I’ve ordered often enough from them that now they tend to offer me pretty nice discounts and extras like free vases.

Jeff is very diplomatic about Freddie’s, the only gay bar in Arlington and therefore the closest to us. The eye candy, though admittedly nice where it was found, was spare, and the MC who introduces the karaoke singers was excruciatingly unfunny. As I almost apologetically noted to Jeff at one point, he probably didn’t expect to be hanging out in a bar like that until he was more my age than his own, at which he looked around and admitted that he almost singlehandedly brought down the average age. There was also an interesting group of straight folk–a wedding party including the bride and groom; as Jeff and I mused, any bride whose husband takes her to karaoke at a gay bar on their wedding night is probably in for a rude Kate Jackson Making Love moment some day. I suggested to Jeff that she might have seen the signs when his wedding day makeup and coiffure were better than hers.

As to Jeff’s mock horror at turning 27. Yeah, my heart’s bleeding.