Pre-birthday fun

There has been a lot of fun stuff going on lately. The latest has mostly been surrounding my birthday (which is still a few days away). Had a great birthday dinner and drinks with friends on Saturday night. Ate dinner at a great Latin American place called Paladar in which they served the food family style. It was wonderful. Then we headed out to a few bars to drink and party and meet up with some other peeps. I wasn't out as late as last year, but I was surrounded by my New York family, and that's all that matters. You can check out the pictures here.

Then on Sunday I picked up my birthday present from my real family, an advanced digital point-and-shoot camera. I've been wanted to get really into photography since I moved to NY, but my little camera just didn't have the juice. Boy does my new camera have it! 10 megapixels, 20x optical zoom, settings customizable to fully manual. And it takes video. For me, there was no reason to go to an SLR at this point. If I get really good and want to be able to go really advanced I'll purchase one in a few years, but this is more than perfect for now! Thanks family!

And finally, I got a tattoo today. I've been wanting one for a long time and could never determine exactly what it should be. Six months ago an idea came to me, a snowflake. It is perfect for so many reasons... they are beautiful, complex, geometric but also organic, represent the season and sport I love, and reminds me of my favorite childhood memories of playing in the snow with my family at night. But I wanted it to be stylized, and after seeing a swirly snowflake on a brochure while skiing in Colorado in February I was inspired. Based on what I saw then, I designed my own, and really fell in love. So today, as my birthday present to myself, I had it done over lunch (which is pretty funny).

I've also decided to do something I've never done for my birthday every year. Something I've always wanted to do, but never had the guts or the money or whatever. I felt really free and exhilarated when I did the blue hair last year, and feel the same today. So many times in my life I haven't done certain things because I wanted to fit in, be professional, or just act like a grown up. Forget it. Life's way too short. When I thought about what to do next year, skydiving was the first idea to pop into my head. Maybe it'll be something else, but who knows. Stay tuned and find out in August of next year. I hope one day to accomplish my all-time greatest dream, to go heli-skiing. But that takes a lot of guts and money, so it might take a long time!

Without further ado, the tattoo:

More pictures are here.

This weekend I fly home to Chicago to enjoy a low-key weekend with my family and am really looking forward to having dinner on my birthday with them in Greektown. Mmmmmm.... birthday baklava! I'm only sad to leave the amazing park weather expected for this weekend in NY, but that's okay, I've been jonesing to get a little hit of Chicago for a while. Stay tuned, more tales to come.