This past Friday was my 27th birthday. It's kind of strange to be even closer to 30 now than 20. On Thursday we went to Discovery Park, not necessarily for my birthday, but I thought I'd mention it because it's a nice park with an awesome view of Puget Sound and Rainier to the south. I really enjoyed sitting on the beach listening to the waves crashing in and seeing the sailboats and ferries pass by.

I had to work on my actual birthday. My co-workers gave me a few cards and made peanut butter chocolate kiss cookies and spice cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and small chocolate chips inside and on top.

After work a few of them took me out to happy hour at Rock Salt right on Lake Union. Troy met us there after a little while. We actually had a nice view of the lake. I wasn't sure we would since happy hour is only served in the lounge, but we could see the lake pretty well. Someone got a few things for all of us to share and I also got the crab cakes and onion rings. I also had a glass of Chardonnay and a Mai Tai. The food was good and it was nice to hang out with some co-workers outside of work.

After happy hour, Troy and I went home and played some of our new video game we bought, Katamari Damacy. It's a cute, easy game where you roll around a ball picking up anything and everything until you get to the size required to complete the level. You have a time limit, so you can't just take an hour or something. It's entertaining and interesting to play.

Speaking of games, my sister mailed me a birthday present package that I got early last week and it had Soul Caliber II for the PS2 in it. It's a street fighter type of game and is really fun to play on 2 player mode with Troy. She also gave me a giftcard to the GAP to buy some clothes. There were also two cards in the package, which confused me at first, but then I figured out that one was from Lauren and the other was from my little niece, Evie! They were cute cards and it was neat to get my first happy birthday Aunt card.

We watched our Netflix movie, The Remains of the Day, which was a good, but sad movie.

On Saturday, Troy went to Noah's and brought back some asiago bagels and a super onion bagel for breakfast. Unfortunately they didn't have any sesame bagels, maybe next time. After bagels, Troy took me to see Toy Story 3 at the Pacific Place AMC downtown. It was a really good movie, possibly better than the first two.

Then we walked to Pike Place Market to grab a snack of macaroni and cheese from Beechers, easily the best I've ever had anywhere. We also saw goats eating grass on the hillside while walking to the waterfront to the market. Apparently some people rent goats from a company to "mow" their grass if it's on a steep hill and they can't get a lawnmower down there easily. Seeing the goats was kind of funny.

We went back to the apartment where Troy gave me my card and present, which was a National Geographic Guide to the National Parks of the US. This will come in handy when we're planning our trips to the National Parks.

After that, Troy took me to Palisade for dinner. I told him to surprise me, but I suggested either Palisade or Seastar. We each got a glass of Pinot noir wine. I liked it more than I thought I would, it's much better than Cabernet in my opinion. I got a small salad and the scallops for dinner. They were probably the best scallops I've ever had, they were so good. Cooked perfectly and very tasty. They were sitting on a bed of black lentils and other toppings. Troy got the flash seared Hawaiian Opah fish with spicy coconut curry. We had a nice view of downtown and Mount Rainier.

We were stuffed from dinner, so we just chilled out the rest of the night and watched the Sounders beat the Earthquakes 1-0. We also played the collaborative game of Pandemic, which we lost unfortunately. It was a little difficult to get into at first because it's a little complicated, but I'm sure we'll get better at it the more we play.

I took a rain check for my dessert since we already had several desserts to eat around the apartment. Troy said he might make it later this week. Overall it was a fun birthday weekend.