Today I turned 32. It sounds old but feels young, luckily. I haven’t been posting much this week, so, to make up for it, here’s a recap of all the festivities. I didn’t have much planned, and it seems that low expectations really is a sure path to high levels of satisfaction:

The celebrating actually began last night, when my friend Alyssa invited me out for a night of wine tasting compliments of Wine and Spirit magazine’s  Top of the List Tasting event! There must have been 100 vineyards to choose from and tons of food to sample too. Our favorites: Simi Winery for wine (we liked the chardonnay) and Lani Kai for food (some sort of Hawaiian pork taco).

I went to bed at 10:30 (the earliest I can remember—welcome to 32, I guess!) and woke up early. I watered my plants. First the lettuce, which is growing like crazy:

Then the beets. The ones on the left were starter plants and have really taken off. The seeds on the right are filling in pretty well, too.

Finally the scallions (from starter plants) then the beets (which came from seeds).

I got dressed for a bike ride into the city (something I’d been craving all week). I topped off my outfit with my favorite necklace which seems to depict the “tree of life,” or at least that’s what it means to me. Health, growth, life… You know what I mean.

Then I indulged myself with a spritz of my new birthday perfume: Le Jardin Sur le Nil, from Hermes. I’d read a wonderful article about the making of this scent a few years ago in The New Yorker, which chronicled the perfumer’s float down the Nile for inspiration (thus the hints of mango and citrus). My parents had wanted to get me a birthday gift and while I don’t really need anything, this was something I’d wanted for a while. Thanks mom and dad!

Here’s my birthday-bike-to-work look. The shoes—another pair of Danskos—worked really well, but the skirt was so-so. It’s fitted in the hips then flared at the knees which made it hard to tuck underneath me but also susceptible to wind gusts. Hello New York City!

I paused to take a pic of the Lower East Side on my cruise into the office:

I forgot to mention how great technology is on birthdays. I woke up with tons of well wishes on facebook, and after Bicycling magazine retweeted my announcement about my birthday ride to work I even got happy birthdays from people I didn’t know. Way to make a girl feel special!

At work I got the same star treatment. Here’s the sign that was on my door when I arrived. So sweet!

Work was a flurry of activity. But I was able to break away to make my mid-morning breakfast (greek yogurt, strawberries, bananas, and granola):

I took a killer kickboxing class at the gym with my friend Kerrie over lunch, then made a heaping salad for myself (spinach, quinoa, ricotta salata, endive, grated beet, apple, dried cranberry, and almond slivers):

For dinner I went to my best friend Lisa’s house, but she got a migraine soon after I arrived. I felt so bad for her, but was glad that I was there to watch her daughter Ella, who’s 4 and a half. It was actually totally surreal. I was playing house with her daughter, then her husband got home in time for the food we ordered so I celebrated my birthday with them while Lisa slept. It was a strange glimpse at what life would be like had I made a few different turns in the road! That said, I’m pretty psyched about where I’m at. Here’s to another great year!