Birthday.

It was my birthday last week. Friday to be exact. I'm one year closer to 30 and it kind of freaks me out...

I took the day off of work and spent the day doing nothing too exciting. It was a good day though. I "slept in." Not really. My plan was to sleep in, but between the text messages and facebook alerts, that didn't really happen.

I eventually got up and went and got my hair cut. Nothing fancy, just a trim. I couldn't decide if I actually wanted to change anything so I just got all the icky ends chopped off. Then I spent the afternoon over at my mom's house chatting and preventing her from working.

That night, Bill and I went to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, Best of India. So freaking good. Our waiter (who may have been one of the owners) was really nice and I got to chat about how I've actually been to India. We got our usual favorite dishes. Mine is Paneer Mahkani and I can never remember what Bill orders, a dish that I would say is like the Indian version of fried rice. It's all mixed together with chicken and some veggies (maybe). Then of course we ordered Naan, because that's basically required. I tried out Flying Horse beer and Bill had the normal Taj Mahal. Yum.

Later that night, we went to the late showing of "Don't be Afraid of the Dark" with my sister and her boyfriend. I'm not sure if I liked it. I really like trying to be scared, but I don't usually get scared. It was a little freaky, but it didn't prevent me from sleeping or give me nightmares. I liked the story line of it. But... it did do a lot of the jumpy things. And there were a lot of scary movie cliches... not turning on lights, parents not believing what the kid is saying, etc.

Anyways, the day was good and I got 3 great gifts. 2 actual things and 1 gift card. My dad got me a gift card, which I need to find something awesome to buy with it...

My mom got me this fantastic Jo Totes camera bag that I've been eyeing...

My hope was to use it for work and be able to fit my camera, hard drive, and files in it. After re-arranging it multiple times, I've concluded that it will work great for my camera and hard drive but not so much for files. So, my goal is to now not have files to bring back and forth.

Bill got me a new camera...

A Nikon D3100. It's wonderful, but it's nothing fancy. It's one I've been looking at for awhile now. I have/had an ok camera, but it wasn't anything spectacular. I think just the advances in the technology over the past few years has really helped. The new lens that I now have has vibration reduction, which is pretty sweet. I've already got my eye on another lens and hopefully I'll make the move and purchase that soon.

I'll put up some pics from it soon (this week?). I haven't done anything too interesting lately, so it will probably just be photos of the dog and flowers I have outside. We're planning on going to the Minnesota State Fair this weekend, so I think I'll bring it with and try to get some good shots.

And actually I got more than 3 gifts. Bill gave me the camera a week before my birthday because he has this need to give gifts as soon as he hands them in hand. He's always way more excited to give than to receive. So, we made a deal... If I opened it now, there would be no more super early gift openings. So, on my actual birthday, he came home with a box of truffles and a new key chain for my shiny new car keys (which is another story...).

Can't wait to try out the camera some more!