Birthday 35

This weekend was definitely something special. For a while now, birthdays have been more about my experiences and who I'm spending time with as opposed to gifts. Although I did ask Patrick to help start a new tradition by buying me a birthday card and writing something personal in it; and I will keep them all in a special place as the years go by.

Saturday was fairly chill, especially since Patrick had to go to work that night. After he got up around 12 (from working Friday night), we headed over to my friend Dave's house to borrow his Sigma Art f/1.4 20mm lens because we were planning on going Milky Way shooting on Sunday night. I have to use a Nikon adapter in order to use it, and I honestly think that if I had a native Sony E-Mount version that the pictures might turn out better. It's still an awesome lens though.

We then had a 4:15 reservation at Duke's Chowder House (for which I get a Birthday coupon for every year) that is one of my favorite places to eat. The sweet potato fries are to die for. I usually gravitate towards the salmon and Patrick got the burger.

Patrick did have to go to work that night so we didn't have much time for anything else. Sunday was going to be packed with stuff, though. At 9:30am Sunday morning, we had tickets for Avengers: Endgame. It was opening weekend. Poor Patrick was running on about 3 hours of sleep but he managed to stay awake during the movie. We then only had a couple of hours to kill before I picked up Mary so that she could meet Patrick; and we played Scene It: Star Trek, which Mary and I always played together and I would win of course, but now I had some competition. Yeah, Patrick is a trekkie (of course he is! Would I be dating him otherwise??) ;) I pretty much knew I would get second place, and I did! It's just no fun when you don't win! lol We went to Bevmo and picked up some alcohol. Patrick likes Whisky Sours because he's some kind of weirdo lol I picked up Kinky Liqueur because I like my alcohol not to taste like alcohol. We couldn't hang out too long, though. I had to drop Mary off back home before 6pm because Game of Thrones was dropping on HBO then, and Matty couldn't wait to watch it.
Patrick is starting from the last season here, and I'd only "caught him up" by having him watch a 30 minute youtube recap of all the prior seasons. He's doing very well keeping track of everything considering how complicated the series is as a whole. He seems to be enjoying it at least.

So after GOT was over we both had to take a nap in order to leave at 1:30am to head out to Elbe for some Milky Way shooting. I was definitely going to take advantage of the fact that his days off are Sunday/Monday and I took Monday off. I was lucky that it was going to be a mostly clear night!
He was very excited because he'd never seen the Milky Way with the naked eye before. I was excited to show him my "secret" spot that I go to to practice my shots. But I think I was more excited because he was excited. It almost seems too good to be true that he enjoys coming out with me to stare at the night sky for a couple of hours while I take photos.

We had a really good night, and didn't even get home until almost 6:30am. After we woke up midday on Monday we took advantage of the nice weather and walked some on the Scott Pierson trail by my apartment, and watched The Greatest Showman - one of my favorite movies. He likes musicals, ya'll! Can you believe it?

This man is definitely a keeper.

That was pretty much it for my birthday weekend!