Laura's birthday

Happy birthday to my wonderful girlfriend, Laura!


To celebrate Laura's birthday, we met Amy and Dewey at Wildfire in Eden Prairie on Saturday evening - Laura absolutely LOVES the Halibut at Wildfire, and it did not disappoint. Afterwards we finished the evening at the ever popular Redstone restaurant and enjoyed their patio since the weather was nearly perfect.


A little plug for the iPhone. I had installed a free application called Shazam earlier in the day and it really came in handy at Redstone. Shazam is a song recognition application - it's really amazing. If you hear a song on the radio or in a restaurant and want to know the name of it and the artist, just press the button. For about 20 seconds, the iPhone listens to the song, analyzes it, and then displays the information - from there you can buy it from iTunes if you so choose. We did this probably a dozen times on the patio at Redstone, it was really fun! For the record, they played tunes by Jimmy Doresey, Fred Astare, Rosemary Clooney, Diana Krall, and Earth Wind and Fire, just to name a few.

Sunday was Laura's actual birthday and the first words out of her mouth were "I want pancakes". And since it's a rule in our home to give the birthday child whatever they want for breakfast, I placed an order at Perkins and picked it up so we could eat in our pajamas.

In the afternoon we saw The Dark Knight at the local AMC theatre. I read a headline today that said The Dark Knight has grossed over $300 million in the past 10 days and is poised to beat Titanic as the highest grossing film of all-time. Laura and I both thought The Dark Knight was FANTASTIC!! You don't even have to be a Batman fan to appreciate the movie.

Keith Ledger's Joker was brilliant. I read the reviews and thought, "Yeah, I get it, he died and we're honoring his memory by giving him good reviews". That is definitely NOT the case. He brought an entirely new dimension to the Joker character I've known since I picked up comic books as a child. I am sad that he's not around to reprise the role - he was amazing.

You won't believe this part. Laura had a hankering for White Castle.

Yeah. Sliders.

So she went to the grocery store to get stuff for salads, and I went to White Castle to get the burgers.

We ended up skipping the salads. Ha!

I just have to say - there is something about birthdays. It's a special day for both the birthday boy/girl and those around them. We tend to measure the day's success on the happiness of the birthday boy/girl, and I'd call this day (weekend) a success. Laura's happiness is of paramount importance to me every day, but especially on her birthday. And if I can make it a good day by doing even the simplest of things, then it was a good day. And it was.

Happy birthday, Laura - I love you!