For my birthday Hil planned everything. And every event followed a theme, or had some kind of significance to our past.
For breakfast she made us dosa, a type of tiffin, or Indian breakfast fast food. I had told her all about tiffins before our trip to India, but I knew she wouldn't understand until going to India and eating tiffins. And then she brought back idli pans and idli/dosa mixes and sambar powders and recipe books. And for breakfast we ate dosa filled with aloo along with sambar and coconut-peanut chutney.
Then we drove out to someplace that was going to be a surprise. She wouldn't let me drive because I have a tendency to get angry when I drive and she didn't want me getting angry. We drove out to Maryland's renaissance festival. We had a great time watching a sword-swallower, a comedy team named "Hack and Slash," the bands E Muzeki and the Rogues, Shakespeare plays, a tightrope-walking knife-juggler, and jousting. We had talked about going to the festival, but I hadn't actually thought that we'd ever go. And we had a great time just being at the festival, and a good amount of fun reminiscing on my nerdy Dungeons & Dragons days living in the basement of my parents' house.
After the festival we went to dinner at Mama Ayesha's. We had met the owner in Jerusalem just a couple months before. And we stayed at his relative's, Ibrahim's, house on the Mount of Olives. At Mama Ayesha's we chatted in Arabic with each other and the waiter.
And then we went to see Stardust, a movie based on the graphic novel/novella by Niel Gaiman. I read the story years before, before my mission even. And one day in Jordan last year, we were riding in a hot and crowded bus and Hilary was feeling sick. So I told her the story of Stardust, about a boy named Tristan who escapes through the village wall to go find a fallen star. She loved the story and we had no idea that they were making a movie of it. We both loved the movie too.
And then for our anniversary it was my turn to plan. We left town on Friday night and waited in traffic along with all the other Washingtonians escaping the city for the weekend. We drove east, through Annapolis, across the bridge, to a little bed and breakfast in Queenstown.
The next day we wandered around antique stores looking at $14,000 dining chair sets and $50,000 fireplace mantles shipped from castles in France. Then we drove out to Saint Michael's and Tilighmuk (sp?) Island, which is a beautiful area with lots of water and colonial houses.
In other news I've found full-time work at the Washingtonian Magazine. My name will appear in the masthead of next month's magazine. I'm in the accounting department, currently comparing the price of freelance photography versus hiring another staff photographer. I already have more than enough evidence to show that we need another photographer. But my boss wants to have all the facts before making any big changes.
And aside from all that, I've been considering work in Iraq as a translator, contracted to the Army through L-3 Communications, which bought Titan and its share of this year's $5 billion translation market. The pay is excellent, and it will satiate my lifelong desire to join the military. Starting next week I'll have to take some more tests to see if I qualify.
And in the biggest news we're going to be having a baby. We're not sure if it's a boy or a girl. And we're not sure of the due date. In fact, we're not sure of much of anything yet. But I'm going to become a father sometime in the next nine months.
