Birthday Festivities 2015

My birthday was last week.  I turned old.  That's a lie.  I was already old.  I turned 34 which is definitely a new level of old.  It's over 3% older than 33, so that number right there tells you I'm pretty old.

We didn't do a lot of celebrating on the actual day of my birthday.  (Robyn did take me out to dinner that night, though.)  Much like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, I celebrate my birthday the Monday before the actual day.  Most people call this day Memorial Day.  I call it, "My birthday observed."

On My birthday observed, Robyn told me to wake her up 30 minutes before I want to eat breakfast.  I actually thought that meant that it would take her 30 minutes to do her hair and other such womanly activities.  What it actually meant was that it took 30 minutes to drive there.  She took me to The Original Pancake House in Draper.  I the most delicious breakfast burrito known to man, as well as some fantastic pancakes.

Before I tell you the next activity Robyn had planned for me, I should tell you that Robyn takes her students on all sorts of field trips, and I always tell her that I'm jealous and I want to go on a field trip.

So she took me on a field trip to the Living Planet Aquarium.

Field trips are so great!

We took selfies with sharks

I got to touch a ray.  (I've done it before, but it's super cool so clearly I did it again.)

I took a selfie with the arapaima.  (If you don't know what an arapaima is, you need to watch River Monsters.  It's the only fish that really scares Jeremy Wade.)

We had selfies with penguins.

I even got to pose with the napping otters.  (Incidentally, a little kid 3 or 4 years old was put in this same spot by his dad.  When he saw the otters, a look of pure terror came over his face.  It was precious.)

There were also important things that happened that weren't captured in selfies.  (I know.  You wish there were more selfies in this post.)  The first is that when I saw the octopus, I got up really close to his little tank and whispered, "Cthulhu fhtagn".  Doesn't that just seem like something an octopus would want to hear?

The second was when we watched the guy swimming into a giant tank filled with sharks and rays.  He had food with him to feed the rays.  The rays would come up and eat out of his hand.  The sharks knew he had food so they kept swimming up and trying to get it from him.  He would just grab them and push them away.  I kept thinking, "That guy is totally fighting off hungry sharks.  Best job ever!"

I hear you have to have a degree in marine biology to be the guy that fights off sharks.  I guess I'll just have to stick with my computer programming job.