Best Birthday, Ever

This year my birthday was low-profile, no muss, no fuss. I made a vague suggestion to P that there were some people I wanted to see, he made an attempt at a rencontre, but since there were so many things happening this weekend (Osheaga, farewell parties, other birthdays, etc) I didn't hold my breath for anything.

But boy, did I get swept off my feet. First, we spent a lovely friday night at our dear friend Arl's going away party. I caught up with Lé, whom I hadn't seen in many weeks, and saw some friends away for the summer. We went home and I went to work the next day. I come home, get dolled up according to his instructions (blue polka-dot 40s style Banana Republic dress to the rescue, with coral sandals), he met me at 6pm and delivered a bag of surprises. A new Strand bag! Mine was looking pretty shabby, so I was very pleased to get this nifty new one. In it P packed a few more items, a teeny box of chocolates, Elizabeth Gilbert's first book Stern Men, a sweet card, and the most incredible gift ever: a Bamboo drawing tablet like this



He said when he saw me having so much fun with his tablet, he thought it would be a good idea for me to have one to jump start my graphic design career. He also said he found an old version of Indesign that my (poor, little, weak) computer could handle.

I'm so excited and motivated! It's awesome. It reminds me of the story his mom told me about how she became a writer. She said: 'I wanted to stay home and raise the children, but I had always been interested in writing. Alain bought me our first computer so that I could write.' And the rest is history (she has almost a million books in print, actually). Anyway, getting this design tool from P kind of boosts my confidence. He said, 'see! now you're a real designer!' which was really sweet.

I think I'm going to contact Moment Factory again soon to see if I could intern there. I want to get my foot in the door of some design studios. I watched a documentary on Annie Leibovitz, that was really motivating too. It reminded me how much I loved Susan Sontag's On Photography so I bought it used right away. That a Barthes' photography book. I remember how it made me feel so connected to creative work.

I want to paint, and photograph, and arrange, and blog, and surf, and look, and bike around. Life is awesome. I want to remove all the pictures from my room, paint my walls a light shade of grey and make an assemblage of pictures in the living room. I also want this lamp.

I should stop wanting material things though... :s