Birthday Fun

It was S's birthday on Monday, so she picked me up at work at 3pm, and we went to a restaurant called Geoffrey's of Malibu. Which has staggeringly attractive sea views, and is expensive. (Well, Americans think it's extraordinarily expensive, but more on that in a moment).

We went to Geoffrey's (which the waiters pronounced Joffrey's - apparently this was the original owner's wish, but he's dead, so no one can check that it wasn't some sort of joke. We arrived at Geoffrey's in our car - and drove into the car park. You can't park your own car - it's valet parking only.

In films, people get out of the car and throw their keys to the parker (or whatever they're called) and park their car. Having done this sort of thing before, I've learned that it's better to just leave the keys in the ignition. It doesn't look as cool, but I think it annoys them less. The car park was full of cars that made ours look small - there was a Ferrari, two Porsches, and a sprinkling of BMWs, Mercedes, and Lexi (that's what Douglas Coupland says the plural of Lexus is). (Or strictly speaking, one of the characters in the book Microserfs).

The food wasn't hideously expensive, if you only had salads and starters, which is what we did. Not really by choice - there was no vegetarian main course, but this was a snack 'cos we weren't going to be eating properly until 10 ish. We had desserts too - I had a passion fruit tower, which cost $8. I realized that I might be turning American when I started to recoil at the price. This is a restaurant that Americans say is staggeringly expensive - for very special occasions only. (It actually came up in discussion today, and 'expensive' was the first adjective that everyone thinks of). Salads were $11, and starters about $8.

The waiters were extraordinarily courteous and polite and nice. Instead of asking what we wanted to order, they asked "What would you like to enjoy?" When it came time to leave, the car was parked about 20 feet away from is (with the keys still in the ignition), but they ran over and drove it to us - then the chap had to leap out , run around the car and open the door for S, before she managed to do it. She was slightly surprised by someone jumping between her and the door, moments before her door reached the handle.

Then we went to the cinema, to see Music and Lyrics. Now, Google can do some clever stuff, like maths (I'm supposed to say "Math" now). But I typed the name of the film into Google (which was 'Music and Lyrics' ... I know, but it was her birthday. What was I supposed to say). And Google gave me the cinemas that it was on at, and the times, near our house. In one sense this was rather useful. In another, how does Google know where we live?

Anyway, we got to the cinema very early, and as it was S's birthday and she was allowed a treat, we went shopping and she bought me a pair of trainers and a shirt. It's part of the deal that I have to throw out an old pair of trainers and a shirt. But maybe she'll forget.

We went to the cinema to watch the film, and bought an enormous vessel of Diet Pepsi to share. S suggested that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to have such a large caffeinated drink in the evening, but we were going to share it, and it wasn't that late. And we watched the film. (Which had a fairly stereotyped storyline, but was quite amusing in places).

Our plan was then to go to a Thai restaurant, but we were too weary, so we went home. On the way home we decided we were hungry, so we stopped at Ralph's supermarket to get some snacks. Ralph's is an American supermarket, so it sells all sorts of prepackaged tasty food that's ready to eat, so I bought some sushi (with avocado inside), some spring rolls, and some salad.

Aside: Spring rolls aren't usually what we call spring rolls - they are egg rolls (for some mysterious reason - they don't have egg in them). Spring rolls are raw, and have beansprouts, and sliced vegetables inside a sort of soft rice paper. These had a big lump of tofu, and came with peanut sauce.

Then we had some champagne (it seems that S had been drinking it earlier) and went to bed. I lay awake twitching and listening to my heart race for a while, then I gave up and read a book, until 2:30, and the caffeine in the diet coke had worn off.