My birthday, by Rosanne, aged 37

Tues­day was a crazy day at my new job but Doug came and picked me up at 6pm and we went to dinner. I chose Lem­on­grass, because I knew we were going to a movie later and I haven’t been there for ages and ages. We had abso­lutely delight­ful mieng (those little par­cels of lychee and nuts and sauce wrapped in sesame leaves) and bar­ra­mundi in green mango sauce for mains.

Then we went to Koko Black for dessert and I had cin­na­mon hot chocol­ate and an ice-cream mar­tini with car­a­mel sauce and Doug had a selec­tion of Bel­gian chocolates. 

I checked my phone for the first time that day (told you work was busy) and had tons of texts from all of you amaz­ing friends and a few mes­sages includ­ing one from 

in Sydney and an inter­na­tional phone call from the always amazing 

which was heart­warm­ing and won­der­ful. I got to hear her sing happy birth­day in Eng­lish, Dutch and Niels-spe­cial. So I rang her back and we got to talk for a while, which was great.

We wandered down Lygon Street under the full moon to the Nova, where we saw the lovely Juno, which I’d heard so much about from 

via 

. The char­ac­ters in this film are just fab­ulous. The young Juno is sassy and smart, Allyson Janney is superb as the step-mother, and J Jonah Jameson has some ter­rific lines as the tough-but-loving ex-mil­it­ary Dad. I didn’t quite know how it would be pos­sible to make a comedy about teen­age preg­nancy but this man­ages it, and it man­ages to be touch­ing and sweet at the same time. I was really sur­prised at Jason Bate­m­an’s char­ac­ter and there were some moments I recog­nised myself from a few years ago in Jen­nifer Garner’s char­ac­ter. I love the serve Allyson Janney gives the ultra­sound tech­ni­cian! If I had more time this morn­ing, I’d go do my research and flesh out this review with my usual obser­va­tions about the dir­ect­or’s past and growth with this film and blah blah, but I’m in a rush, so I’ll just say there are aspects of Ghost World in the styl­ing of the film and the young people’s lan­guage and nat­ural feel is superb.

We ran into an old friend, DJ, who I went to uni with and haven’t seen for ages, which was great. I invited him to the Oscars party (details soon, if you’re espe­cially inter­ested, please respond here).

After that, we wandered back to the van and saw on a wall that Tsonga was two sets up against Youzhni and five all in the third, so I figured there wasn’t long to go. We sat down at the tables out­side and watched the last few games, which was a great end to a great birthday.

Then we went home, I read even more happy birth­day mes­sages from even more people (Face­book is scary, you know? Half of you would never have sent me mes­sages in the past…) and I did a little full moon ritual, but that’s another story…

Then yes­ter­day,

‘s pack­age arrived in the mail, so the fun just con­tin­ued! I got chocol­ates and an amaz­ing red candle with a silver stand although I think that’s a belated wed­ding present…

Thank you to every­one. I feel loved and part of a com­munity! It’s just beautiful.