I took too long (not even 24 hours?) to get back to my school, so they gave the job away to someone else. That's fine, though...I am going to be there in January for a few months. I just wanted to help out if I could. :)

It's fun to get home from your birthday dinner to have 8 phone messages (even if one was from Danny, shrieking "I'M COMING OVER AFTER WORK TO MYSPACE!!!"). It's fun that my friend Amy made me THREE Phil Collins/Genesis mix CDs (How thoughtful is it to make a CD for someone? It makes the gift like 10 times more meaningful. I think I'm going to eat Amy up!) AND gave me a subscription to Reminisce magazine which, yes, is aimed at World War II-era folks, but let's not forget that when I was 12 I had a subscription to Good Housekeeping. And Andy gave me an iPod nano to use when I exercise at Curves so I don't have to listen to their Jesus Rock. And a perhaps record-setting low of one out of my five siblings acknowledged my birthday, and I probably talked to my mom for 1/2 hour this morning before I mentioned where I was having my birthday dinner and she tried to pretend that she'd hadn't forgotten what day it was.

Quinn gave me a set of hair clips, which was her idea entirely, and when she and Andy went out shopping for them she very carefully selected the colors. And she picked out some Yankee Candles for me, which my cousin Funder clearly had a premonition about, as she e-mailed me first thing this morning and said "I hope you get nice gifts, like a candle that smells like flowers and toothpaste and books." But the best part of the day was when Quinn took my hand and said, "You're the best mama in the whole world" out of absolutely nowhere.

So yes. Pretty good day. Turned 36...just another brick in the wall.