Burrito West Blog

I had a lovely birthday last weekend. It was nice to have it fall on a Saturday. It was very nice of the City of Vancouver to put on a party for me, closing streets and having concerts is a wonderful birthday present. They even lit the Olympic flame for me! Pretty awesome. I slept in until a ridiculous hour, covered in cats, then woke up to find Peter had made pancakes and bacon. Eventually we left the house to check out the street party, enjoyed a Bhangra band for a bit, watched some street hockey on Granville, then headed to the Pan Pacific hotel restaurant for dinner. It was their "Opera Buffet", which is a spread of lovely food (the lamb was pretty amazing) enjoyed while four opera singers entertain you. They even sang my absolute favourite piece of music in the whole world, the Flower Duet from Lakme - so lovely, I was in heaven! Having opera singers sing Happy Birthday to you will sort of spoil you for all future versions of the song, however.

It was a lovely day followed by a lovely birthday brunch with friends the next day. But the absolute best part of my birthday was the fact that it put my Charity:water fundraising campaign up over $1000!! I never imagined I'd raise that much money and I'm very very happy! I survived without the presents and am thrilled that the money that would have been spent on stuff will instead be spent to bring people clean drinking water which will save lives. How awesome is that? Thanks to everyone who contributed!

I really encourage everyone to give up their birthday/christmas/anniversary even for just one year and ask for donations to a charity instead - imagine the impact we could all make! It makes getting older pretty awesome.