As we learned in yesterday’s lesson, today is my birthday. It snowed quite a few inches last night (about five) and so that right there makes me giddy on my birthday. You can probably trace the giddiness back to when I was in school and there was a chance that snow on my birthday =ed snow day. Even though snow on my birthday now means crappy commute, I still like it.

The day started out a little rough (Icy roads and a bad latte experience at Whole Foods. Did I speak too soon?) but once safely at work with my warm beverage, things improved. First off, I learned that the governor gave all state employees (that’s me!) an extra day off for the holidays. I already get x-mas and the day after, along with new year’s eve and new years day. Now I can pick either x-mas eve or January 2nd for free. That merits a little happy dance.

Then I found out that the custom blinds I ordered a few weeks ago are arriving today. (Come on, I’m getting older and I’m a home owner. These things excite me. Not so much to merit a happy dance, but still.)I also had to make a series of appointments today (all for good stuff – no doctors!) and those all fell into line too. Again, no happy dance but a little happy head-grooving.

People at my new job are still figuring out that I exist so I didn’t really expect any kind of pomp or circumstance today but I also didn’t expect to get quite so many birthday emails from my former colleagues. It seems my last group kept me on the birthday list and most people (including my former manager) sent me a note to say happy b-day. It was sweet and made me miss them. (Of course, the two individuals who were horrible to me didn’t say anything. No surprise there. And, of course, I don’t miss them.)

Tonight, a few friends will be coming over for dinner that I won’t be cooking. In keeping with the feats of strength tradition (you might recall that I did 32 vinyasas when I turned 32), I’m going to go with 34 sips of champagne. You might think it’s no big deal but it kind of is for a Tuesday night when you’ve only been at your job a week and you have a check-in with your new boss early the next morning. Wish me luck!