Birthday Surprises

This week has been spent recovering from Vegas and the birthday weekend, but I've still had some birthday surprises since! Like on Monday, I got a mystery FedEx package delivered to me, which included some inexplicable horse stickers decorating it around the side. That's how I knew it was going to be a real gem, and I was not disappointed!

My old coworkers at Columbia threw together the best, most random birthday box for me, a lot of which included people's random desk trinkets and old things in our storage closet that we had no idea what to do with... yep, that Feminist Ryan Gosling book, the Happy Birthday centerpiece, that small baby jacket... and now it's here with me, which I can certainly appreciate for the nostalgia. They also included the good ol' Office of Career Services chocolate bars, a load of Office of Admission pens, a Tom's Restaurant box (famous from Seinfeld), those printed flyers and signed cards, andmore horse stickers. I was dyyyying while opening it, I'm so surprised I didn't wake Vinny the Sleeping Kitty!

I don't think I've had a chance to mention it, but I now teach ESL to adults two evenings a week in Riverside, and my cast of characters includes a Spanish lawyer, a Nicaraguan girl about my age, and an older Iranian woman working on a masters in women's studies at UCR. They are awesome. But there I was teaching last night and at the end of the class the center director walks in with cake and they are all singing happy birthday to me! Apparently when she was entering all my employee info in, she noticed that it had just been my birthday and got everyone on board. It was so unexpected and sweet!

Yesterday was also Marisa's birthday, so after our yoga class we went to a pretty neat little spot in Redlands and got some frozen yogurt to celebrate ourselves. We have been getting surprisingly into yoga, we're both getting pretty good at the crow pose and never want to miss! Plus we have our yoga mats and fancy straps and getting yoga towels and stuff too. Nothing like a groupon to kickstart a new habit! Or maybe kickstarter would be better for that...