Today is Patrick’s birthday! I let him sleep in (meaning I kept Lola occupied for as long as I could), made him some coffee and gave him a Vampire Weekend CD (he really enjoyed them on SNL a couple of weeks back).

Eventually, Lola would not be ignored any longer. She woke him up with kisses and allowed him to rub her belly for a while. Then, bless Patrick’s heart, he went out in yucky weather to get me a Sunday paper. What a guy!

Earlier this week he got a special gift in the mail from my folks — a framed “slick” of the Fayetteville Observer page where his photo appeared last month. We’re trying to figure out where to hang it — in the meantime, here it is:

With some of the birthday money his folks sent, we took a birthday trip yesterday to Virginia Beach. We went to the Virginia Aquarium and saw otters, seals, all manner of strange-looking fish, and enormous, old sea turtles.

Here we are with an otter (not real, but hey):

After the aquarium, we went to Harpoon Larry’s for an early dinner near the beach. It was too rainy and cool to go down to the water — maybe next time.

To complete our aquatic theme, we stopped at Carvel on our way back home and picked up a Fudgie the Whale cake! I had told Patrick a million years ago how the old Carvel ads used to come on at my Grandma’s house on Long Island, and those cakes seemed like the most amazing thing a person could get. Here’s one ad I remember:

Fudgie didn’t quite live up to 25 years of hype, but we didn’t hate it. Here he is before getting hacked to pieces: