Me and Mr. Bean’s Birthday Fun

Yesterday was my birthday. For those of you who wished me the happiest of birthdays I thank you.  Through Facebook, Instant Messaging, text, phone calls, cards and what-not I felt inundated with birthday goodness. If there’s one good thing that social media has brought us, it’s the fact that we can randomly spit out birthday greetings at the touch of a button.  Bravo, Mr. Zuckerberg.

Of course the first thing that I did yesterday was check out the ‘If January 6 is your birthday….’ predictions on the internet. Because what if I missed something that I was supposed to do when Venus was in alignment with Saturn and Pluto was inexplicably in retrograde somewhere behind it?  The first horoscope I pulled up was brutally correct:  “exceptionally hard working”, “list-maker”, “somewhat of a perfectionist”.  All absolutely dead on.  I will add here that on every single one of the Chinese place mats I’ve ever eaten upon my ‘animal’ is always noted with ‘”a tendency towards physical beauty”.  I mean, it’s EERIE how correct all of these are.

However, upon further examination of my Guide for Life for 2014 it revealed the following threatening message:  “Uranus is shaking up some areas of your life this year.”  Good lord.  I don’t know if I should schedule a visit to the proctologist now or just wait for the predicted shaking.  I think I’ll wait – but it’s ominous as crap and I’m scared. But it will make for an earth-shattering blog if it comes to fruition.

My Guide for Life concludes that 2014 will be a ‘5’ for me.  5 out of what I don’t know – but I’m a solid 5 and I’m justifiably proud of that.  The final line of the guide says “Advice – explore, look for adventure, keep your eyes open for opportunities, mingle.”  That’s a perfect match for me – because I LOVE to explore and mingle.  I’m a mingler from WAY back and I will continue to perform mingling and embrace it.

My next step on my birthday was to check out who had the same birthday as I.  Presidents?  No.  Kings?  No.  This guy:

 

Honestly, Mr. Bean is my favorite show of all time – and I find it heart-warmingly ironic that his birthday is the same day as mine.  It’s like we’re tied at the hip to fame and fortune.  I even look somewhat like him – and that’s an honour truly worth honoring.  And no, I’m not being sarcastic – I LOVE MR. BEAN! AND WE’RE BORN THE SAME DAY!

On my birthday we went to the mall to eat at a favorite restaurant of mine.  Of course, after dinner my daughter had to do some shopping (and by ‘some’ I mean ‘ridiculous amounts’) so my son and I sat in some comfy chairs waiting for her to be done.  Lo and behold, we created the best gave EVER.  It’s called ‘Guess the Weight of the Next Person to Pass Judging By the Amount of Bounce in the Floor’.  We may have to work on a shorter title.  But the upshot of it all was that as we were sitting there, we could feel the chairs (and whole floor) bouncing when someone walked by.  We soon determined that it bounced with a direct relative correlation to the weight of the person that passed.  Soon, we were nailing,   probably within 20 pounds, the weight of the next person to come by.  And good lord, at the mall there were some serious hits on the Richter scale. It’s life lessons like that I teach my son – in hopes that one day he will take the reins of this blog and lead it down the path to the stable.  I guess it will help if he ever actually reads the blog though.

Anyway, we got home and my wife had made me my favorite birthday cake. My mother used to make it for me and it’s a veritable three-page horror. Seriously.  A three-page recipe:

It’s a four-layer chocolate cake with chocolate pudding in between the four layers and chocolate icing topping the glory.  All made from scratch, not canned frosting, not instant pudding, or anything artificial.  Here’s a picture of the glorious work of my wife:

The toothpicks are a family tradition to hold the cake together so as not to have layer 1 slide off of layer 2, etc.  Finding a toothpick in a slice is akin to finding a baby Jesus in a King Cake.  I’ll have to say, this year my wife absolutely NAILED the cake and it will go down in the annals of birthday cakes.  And it will go down my throat.  Fast.

Thanks again for the birthday wishes and LONG LIVE MR. BEAN!