My birthday - a pictorial

I've been talking about having a roller skating birthday party for a good eight years. It's something that comes up, often at a bar, when I find out a friend has a birthday around the same time as mine.

One of these talks happened at a kid-friendly yet "hipster-approved" restaurant in which Marina heard the whole conversation.

So a few months later, when Matt asked her what we should do for my birthday, of course she said roller skating.

But I've always put ice above roller - especially when dealing with kids who learned how to walk relatively recently. So we headed for the ice rink.

The amount of time it takes for you to look at these photos is about as long as we lasted there. It was "too cold" or "too wobbly" or "too tight" or "too hungry for a cupcake from the cupcake store upstairs."

But for a few seconds, it was pure happiness. Thanks to my cousin Jacky for getting these shots.



Couples skate! I always had to sit out couples skate in high school, so this was both thrilling and foreign.





Bench-warming cousins.



. . .and, time to go.