Birthday Weekend: Bellini, Beer, Basketball, And Ballin’!!!!

So yesterday was my 35th birthday, and the hubby and I made one hell of a weekend out of it. After all, I’m officially old enough to run for President now! That’s not just any ordinary birthday!

To start off the festivities, we went to Bellini Fine Italian Cuisine for dinner on Saturday. It’s a pretty fancy place, one I normally wouldn’t go to because pasta is so cheap to make at home, but they sent me a coupon for a free birthday entree so I decided I’d rather not cook my own birthday dinner (or risk hubby cooking it…he’s not exactly the culinary type). We ordered the cheapest bottle of Pinot Grigio on the menu ($28, some of them went up to $160 😳) and it was good, but not much more impressive than the box wine I usually drink. I ordered linguine with shrimp, mussels, clams and scallops and a spicy red sauce. It’s always a challenge at Italian places finding the one or two items on the menu that don’t have cream sauce or cheese in them, but it was a good choice anyway. Overall, I would still say that I wouldn’t regularly blow money there because it’s just too expensive, but it was a treat not to have to cook. I entertained the idea of getting dessert there, but all of the ones I wanted were made with milk, so we asked our Lyft driver to stop by the store on the way home and got a small cake.

Yesterday, the hubby surprised me with my favorite maple bacon donuts, a cute card, and ammo for my .22. He knows me very well! We met up with a couple friends for lunch and beers in Raleigh and then walked over to PNC Arena to catch the NC State Wolfpack basketball game VS Wake Forest (which I was shocked to learn recently is NOT located in the city of Wake Forest…what??). I never really had a NC team I supported until I met him, but I would have probably ended up being a State fan anyway because it’s by far the more down-to-earth school of the big 3 in this area (UNC, Duke, and State), where the simple country kids who don’t have trust funds go. The Pack did not disappoint, winning over Wake Forest 94-74. Nice! Live basketball is always fun to watch. We also tweeted a selfie of us to the team and it was shown on the Jumbotron!

After all that socializing and being out in public, this socially anxious girl was ready to hide at home for awhile and avoid people, so that’s exactly what I’m doing. Also, eating leftover bacon donuts and pasta and cake, because it would be a shame to let this stuff waste, right? I can go back to my salad diet in a couple days!