many thanks to all

Thanks to everyone who called and left messages on my birthday. It was awesome to get out of work last night to a plethera of messages from well-wishers. I had a great birthday. Last weekend Steve took me to eat at Gramercy Tavern, which was really good food. Simple, straight-forward, and good. Yesterday, my actual birthday, Chef David Carmicheal (our pastry chef, television personality, and all-around greatest american ever or so I'm told) made me a cake in conjuction with a good luck cake for our maitre d' Raj, who is leaving us to work at Per Se. I also got to go into work late, which had nothing to do with my birthday,but it was nice anyway. So I talked to mom and dad and stopped in to see Steve real quick and he gave me the Historian (a new novel) to read. It's pretty good so far. The main abuse of birthday privilage allowed me first pick of beer as we cleaned up Saturday night. I got a very nice Brooklyn lager, so I was very happy. I took a cab up to Steve's place, where Brent was having a little bbq and Steve had saved me pretty much a little bit of everything, so I had a ton of food. Steak, hamburger, pork, potato and macaroni salad, etc. It was really nice to see Brent, Richie and Dana again, since the only one I've seen on a regular basis is Richie, who sometimes joins Steve and I for a movie.

Today I continued my exploration of NYC brunches with Emily and Nan as we went to Cowgirl in the West Village (Greenwich Village). It was pretty good, and afterwards we went boutique window shopping until I had to meet up with Steve to see an early showing of Batman, which totally rocked by the way. Super awesome, Christian Bale is amazing and I'm really pushing for Cilian Murphey (Scarecrow) to play Winston. And now I am going to read some of my new book. thanks again to everyone!