I Suck At Celebrating Karen's Birthday

Friday was Karen's birthday. Happy birthday Karen! Unfortunately, I suck at celebrating Karen's birthday. Luckily for me, Karen has never been big on celebrating her birthday. To her, her birthday is just another day. Her humbleness is very admirable.

I, on the other hand, actually believe that birthdays are an important day. Our son (Braden) was born extremely premature in 2008 and survived for a week. Perhaps my inability with Braden to actually do the things that parents do with their children when they grow up (like celebrating birthdays) is one of the reasons that I believe birthdays are important. After all, I would have liked nothing more than to see Braden reach the age of one... or two... or three, etc.

Regardless, Karen, our baby daughter (Briana) and I celebrated Karen's birthday by dining out at Not Your Average Joe's located in Norwell. We were actually hesitant at first about dining out with Briana because we were not sure how she would react. It turns out, Briana was very good.

In fact, Briana ended up stealing her mommy's thunder at the restaurant. Many of the waitstaff came over and played with her. A few of them remarked about how beautiful she was (to which I take with a grain of salt because really... what person ever tells parents that their baby is ugly even if it were true?). Probably most surprising is the fact that Briana let a stranger hold her. That stranger: our favorite waitperson (Renee) at Not Your Average Joe's. Needless to say, Briana enjoyed all of it. All of this attention will go to Briana's head, I'm sure.

Anyway, for anyone curious, the meal at Not Your Average Joe's was delicious as usual. Karen and I even tried a dessert that we never had before. Even though we are frequenters of Not Your Average Joe's, we really do not have dessert because we are usually stuffed from the meal itself. This being a special occasion, we decided to give dessert a try. Needless to say, we tried hot apple cinnamon sticks for dessert. They were absolutely delicious. (Cue Rachael Ray's "Yum-O" sound.)

All in all, I think Karen enjoyed her birthday celebration which is good. And naturally when Karen and Briana went to bed, I decided to stay up for some alone time. Instead of feeding my movie addiction, however, I decided to switch things up and feed my video game addiction.

The video game that I ended up playing (and completing) was Darksiders. For anyone curious, Darksiders is an action adventure game whereby you play the role of War, one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. The plot centers around War, who is accused of prematurely bringing about the Apocalypse. In an effort to clear his name, he finds the responsible parties and makes them pay to restore the balance between good and evil.

I had a great time playing the game. Mark Hamill (of Star Wars fame) lends his voice talents to one of the characters in the game. In my opinion, it was definitely a fun game. I would be curious to see how the sequel (due to be released in 2012) compares. As well, there has been rumored discussions of a possible comic book series and a movie adaptation of the game. Naturally, I would be intrigued by those options too.

Anyway, now that I have completed Darksiders, I can now move on to my next video game. Yay!