happy birthday to you

Last night I had a birthday dinner for Aaron. It was a small party; I only invited a few people, but that number is automatically doubled after you add all of the default people (roommates, any boyfriends of roommates). So there were 10 of us, which is bordering crowded in our apartment, but I think it was still a good number. Things never work out as planned- I always run out of time... maybe I should start considering zero time the norm...

I made a lemon merengue pie the night before (Aaron's favorite) and last night I made some Chicken Vindaloo. Jessica made Ras Malai (or something like that) - a tasty Indian dessert. She even made her own cheese for it! very impressive. The pie was gorgeous (imho) but I put plastic over it in the fridge and it sweated so it got little sugar-water beads all over the merengue and lost it's straight-out-of-the-Williams-Sonoma-cookbook look. I dabbed off the sugar-water beads a little then put 26 skinny crazy curly candles all over the top, and those distracted from it's otherwise sad appearance. It looked wicked sweet.

The best part of the night was lighting the candles. I wanted the pie to be a surprise for Aaron since it's his favorite. Now, it's important here to remember our looooong hallway, with the kitchen at the back and the living room up front, and my room with two sliding doors that lead into the living room. Everyone was hanging out in the living room, and Jamie and I put candles on the pie in the kitchen. Then we didn't want to a)make the candles blow out while walking and b)risk the candles melting all the way down to the pie during the long trek, so we decided to light them in my room then bust through my sliding doors- all the better since Aaron was sitting right on the other side of them!

We, well I, started lighting candles with a lighter, and Jamie had a book of matches. Bless her heart, the girl pulled off a match and was flicking it on the little strip on the match booklet. So I took it away from her (no time to lose- some candles were already melting and there were 23 more to go!), and gave her the lighter... which she didn't know how to use either. So I showed her how to light a match by putting it in the candle flame, and we were able to get under way. Remember, again, that everybody is right on the other side of these sliding doors which offer absolutely no sound barrier. We are lighting candles, Jamie keeps letting the matches burn too long til the flame nearly nips her fingertips, and we are trying to stifle giggles, a few of which blew out some candles, which incited another burst of giggles, which is detremental to candle flames... you see where this is going. My favorite moment was when Jamie actually let the flame get to her fingers, so she dropped the burning match onto my floor, and pampered her finger while disregarding the match. However, at that point we were both laughing so hard (silently, mind you, or as quietly as we could at least) that neither of us was capable of blowing out the match. So Jamie ingeniously smothers it with her finger, then blows on her scorched finger amid bouts of "ouch,ouch,ouch!"

Incredibly, we did get all 26 candles lit simultaneously and Jamie ran and turned out the hall and living room lights, then threw open my double doors, and the pie made it's glorious appearance to the birthday boy. And everyone lived happily every after. (It was pretty tasty too, if I may say so myself! )