BIRTHDAY(S): I turned 34 on Saturday. R. and I spent a fair amount of the day preparing a party scheduled for Sunday, though we did find time to go to one of our favorite local eateries -- the only really expensive restaurant I've been to in this country where the food is genuinely worth what you pay for it -- as per the instructions of my parents, who sent me a check for my birthday with a card telling us to spend it on a nice dinner. So I got to chow down on lamb and lobster, while Rona had fish stuffed with crab. Not a bad present. Sunday I cooked some chili and some shu mai, while Rona prepped a pasta salad. These were duly ingested at the party, which differed from our previous shindigs in three ways: 1. We had it in the afternoon instead of the evening. 2. Several people brought their kids. 3. Most of the Washingtonians who told us they were available made the drive up to Baltimore, but not a single Baltimorean came. Ordinarily we're overrun with Baltimore people and are lucky if more than a handful of D.C. dwellers show up. Where were they? We found out when one of the missing guests called to say she'd only just realized that the party was on Sunday rather than Monday. (We had headlined our invitation "Labor Day/Birthday Party," so her confusion made sense.) R. suggested that she come over anyway and help us finish off the food and beer; when she turned up Monday afternoon, so did three more people who'd made the same mistake. So in essence, I had a three-day birthday party. And we've got enough leftover alcohol for me to make it a seven-day birthday bender, if I were so inclined. Sadly, now that I'm old enough to afford that much beer, I can no longer conceive of drinking it all. posted by Jesse 5:12 PM . . .