Tomorrow is Dann’s 27th birthday, so today we had a birthday party for him at Bien Thuy, a well-known Vietnamese restaurant here in Atlanta. I’ve only had Vietnamese food a couple of times in my life (when I was visiting Dann, naturally), and so I haven’t tasted much variety of that nation’s food. For the party, though, there was an extended meal with lots of different kinds of dishes made with beef, shrimp, chicken, noodles, and more exotic foodstuffs (like papaya and jellyfish!). I’ve decided I really like Vietnamese food. It doesn’t have the heavy fried taste like American Chinese restaurant food has; rather, it is spiced in such a way that it doesn’t overwhelm the natural flavor of the food. Sometimes it can be very spicy, but that’s not necessarily common. It was excellent, and we finished it off with an ice cream cake and coffee.

His father and stepmother were there, as well as his stepbrother and (step-)sister-in-law, as well as Pan and a number of her Japanese and Thai friends. It turned out to be quite a party. There were balloons all around (not all of them were appropriate – one of them said “Happy 1st Birthday!” while another one said “Old As Dirt.” Maybe they planned it like that; I don’t know.)

It was good to see Dann’s dad again; I haven’t seen him in several years, and I used to see him all the time when I went to hang out at Dann’s house in high school. I didn’t know most of the other people (I’ve only met Dann’s stepbrother once or twice before), but they were all friendly, so it was still good.

Dann got a DVD from somebody, a knife from Pan, and I gave him a G.I. Joe imitation-Lego set. (The first thought I had when I saw it on the shelf was, “G.I. Joe and Lego! Two great tastes that go well together! Why didn’t anyone think of it before?”)

Dann’s 27, and I’ll be 27 soon. Somehow, my life just isn’t as exciting as I thought it would be. I mean, 27 falls into the “late 20’s.” I always thought of my late 20’s as being the time I was settling down, finally having studied and explored and done everything wild and crazy – now I was Mature, and would be Doing Stuff Important. Yes, I have studied and explored (though not done much “wild and crazy” stuff), but I often feel like I’m sitting in front of a pile of jigsaw puzzle pieces – and suspecting that they don’t all come from the same set. In other words, I have a long way to go before I start to “get it together.”

The important thing, though, is that even now, I’m still doing it all with Dann. Even after so many years, we’re both still hanging in there and facing life, dishing it back as hard as we get hit. Hats off to long road slowly trod – as our senior class T-shirt put it, “What a long, strange trip it’s been!”