yesterday, july 6, was my 30th birthday.*

when i turned 20, i freaked out a little bit, thinking how many changes would occur in my life before i turned 30. and sure enough, there have been lots of changes. i graduated college, moved into my first apartment, got engaged for the first time, started grad school, broke off that engagement, moved to philly into my own place for the first time, met karl, bought a house, and got engaged again. back when i was 20, i thought i would be married and have a child by the time i was 30. almost made married, definitely no child yet.

i woke up to 6 presents from karl, wrapped in different paper, scattered around the bedroom. finding them was a tiny treasure-hunt. they were: gourmet tomato mustard from di bruno brothers, a note saying that the new harry potter book would arrive "as if by magic" on the 16th, an amber pendant necklace, a home-made CD of some of the best songs from 1975 (the year i was born. they include: springsteen's "born to run," which sounds like it could have been written today, abba's "SOS," and queen's "bohemian rhapsody," plus 15 others), a DVD set of "the daily show" coverage of "indecision 2004, prelude to a recount," and portable speakers/dock for my ipod.

we finally got out of bed, and i showered then went to get a haircut (first since january, geez). my mom and m--- a-- c---- arrived about noon, and i opened more presents from them. mom gave me a summer-weight bathrobe, a nice chef's knife, two more glasses from our wedding registry, flowers, and a birthday cookie. it is traditional in our family to have a giant birthday cookie instead of a cake. it is the whole cookie recipe, made into one big cookie. yum! m--- a-- gave me monogrammed hand towels (monogrammed with my first initial, which is perfect) and some lavendar hand soap.

we headed downtown for lunch at one of the new stephen starr restaurants, the continental-midtown. it's the new location of his martini bar classic, the continental. i had crab pad thai, which was perhaps the best pad thai i've ever had, even including that served at any of the several genuine thai restaurants in my neighborhood** and a grapefruit martini. more yum!

after lunch, we went to fairmount park*** to visit the japanese house, which i had never been to before. lovely, and well worth the $4 ($3 student) entry fee.

we adjourned to our house for birthday cookie, then mom and m--- a-- left for home. karl and i relaxed for a while, then packed a small picnic and half-drunk bottle of wine and headed for the mann center for the first concert of the philadelphia orchestra's summer season. on the program was the overture to glinka's ruslan and lyudmila, massenet's "meditation" from tha�s, ravel's tzigane, and shostakovich's symphony no. 5. in d minor. the overture and meditation were okay, but not really my favorite, esp. the massenet. i perked up for tzigane, which i'd never heard before, and now am in love with. energetic, modern, dissonant in parts, i loved it.

but really my favorite piece on the program was the shostakovich. he's one of my favorite composers (others include beethoven, hindemith, and dvorak). i heard once that russian music is really best heard performed by a russian orchestra--the rawness that is often present in russian music can only be properly expressed by musicians who've grown up in russia and internalized the harshness of the land and life. and i think that is perhaps true. the musicians of the philadelphia orchestra are no slouches, to be sure. but there are moments in symphony no. 5 that are brutal, and i'm not sure the feeling really came through.

as i lay there on the grass, watching the clouds change shape as the sun set and the sky got dark, listening to shostakovich, accompanied by a lone cicada, i recalled one of the two sublime experiences i have had listening to music. i attended a concert in st. petersburg, russia one night during the summer i lived there. i don't remember the name of the concert hall, or which orchestra was performing. but on the program was shostakovich's symphony no. 4. at the end, after the long final note had died away, the audience was so collectively struck by the power of the performance that the whole room, the hundreds of people in the audience, were completely, totally silent. there was absolute silence in the hall for almost 2 minutes before someone started to clap. then, of course, the hall erupted in applause. but that performance, and those 2 minutes of silence afterward, still gives me shivers when i remember it, even though it was 10 years ago.

thinking about that concert in st. petersburg reminded me of all the concerts and performances i attended in russia. tickets were cheap--really really cheap, maybe a dollar or two, so i saw as many performances at as many different theatres as i could. i saw several concerts in that hall where i heard the shostakovich no. 4, a staged-singing of the opera othello at th marinsky theatre in st. petersburg, ballet (swan lake, giselle, and others) in moscow at the mali (which means small, because it's smaller than the bolshoi theatre. bolshoi meaning 'big') theatre, the russian opera masquerade at the bolshoi theatre, traditional russian folk dancing in several places around kazan, russia, and many other performances that i'm forgetting. i didn't take all those performances for granted even then--i knew how lucky i was to be able to see them--and i do miss that luxury.

the concert at the Mann was a perfect end to a wonderful day. now, may my thirties commence!

*i know the date on this entry says july 6, but i'm actually writing it on the 7th. didn't have time on my actual birthday to write, but wanted the date to be my actual birthday. (could i say actual/actually any more?)

**one of the many things i love about philadelphia is the fact that pretty much no matter where in the city you live, you can say stuff like "one of the several genuine thai restaurants in my neighborhood." you may have to replace "thai" with "indian," "ethiopian," "senegalese," "mexican," "chinese," "chilean," or "vietnamese," (actually, in my neighborhood, i could say indian, ethiopian, chinese, or vietnamese, in addition to thai), but the point remains the same.

***another one of my favorite things about philly is fairmount park. one of the reasons why this is such a great park is this: no one living in the city of philadelphia is ever farther than 1 mile from part of the fairmount park system.