happy 26th!

today is my 26th birthday. (dad says i'm on the wrong side of 25. he can bite me.) and in my honor, the philadelphia orchestra is playing a free concert outdoors in clark park (43rd and chester, west philly)! yay! mom and dad are up for my b-day, and we're going to get a picnic from fresh fields and eat it on the grass at the concert! yay! on the program is: rimsky-korsakov's capriccio espagnol, dvorak's symphony no. 8, and ravel's bolero. i've never heard bolero performed live before. it is, of course, one of the sexiest pieces of classical music around, and should be on everyone's list of "music to make love to." so i'm quite looking forward to hearing it live, though i must say it would be better to hear it with a lover than my parents. ah well, can't have everything. i'm still getting a free outdoor concert by the philadelphia orchestra as a birthday present (nyaa nya nyaa nya nyaa nyaaaaaa).

later: the concert was fabulous. the orchestra sounded good (though they had to be amplified because of the whole outdoor thing), the food was delicious, and the weather was absolutely perfect. low humidity, temps in the high seventies, sunshine, light breeze... the only complaint i had was the choice of music. for a free outdoor concert, to which people who aren't regular classical music listeners are going to go, the orchestra should have picked something more accessible than the dvorak as the central piece. the rimsky-korsakov was fine (though even that could have been changed, i think) and programming the ravel was a stroke of genius. but the dvorak was waaaaay to inaccessible. instead, they should've played beethoven's symphony no. 6, pastoral. you know the one--it's the one in disney's fantasia that has the mythical creatures frolicking in a bucolic setting. perfect for this kind of concert. eh well.

mom made me a chocolate with chocolate icing birthday cake, shaped like a heart. brought it up in the car from virginia. i love you, mom! we ate cake in mom and dad's b&b room after the concert, and i opened my gifts. dad got me a vase made by one of his quaker friends (my dad has recently become a quaker. i don't understand.), and mom and dad together got me a digital camera. a sony dsc-s75, 3.3 megapixel camera. i'm wetting myself over this. can't wait to take it to the king range mountains next week... drooooooool...

so, it turned out to be a pretty good birthday. 26. in the last year, i took a 5-week, 10,500 mile road trip, moved into my first solo apartment, officially ended things with john, went to greece with ingrid, failed my qualifying exams, lost my dog, and started dating.