still celebratin'

I am pretty spoiled. When my birthday falls on a weekday, Ron always extends the celebration to the weekend. Do you remember last year? My birthday lasted for an entire week! Granted, we didn't go to Las Vegas this year, but we are still using my birthday as an excuse to go out to dinner and see movies.

On Friday, we went to Kinder's for my favorite marinated ball tip steak sandwich (YUM!) and then the movie 42. Yesterday we went for an even nicer dinner at Sundance - The Steakhouse in Palo Alto. We had a delicious half bottle of wine, salad and prime rib. We even took the time to share a piece of 7 layered chocolate cake before we hit the road to San Francisco. Very delicious meal.

Next up, we were off to San Francisco to see Disconnect at the only theater in the area that was showing this film. The movie has several different story lines related to current technology and the internet - identity theft, cyber-bullying, internet pornography are among the difficult topics dealt with in the film. This is a very thought provoking movie and the central thread that weaves all the stories together is that people are becoming disconnected from each other due to their connections to technology. A father who is constantly on his cell phone to the point where he neglects his family; a  grieving couple who have had their identities stolen because the wife goes to online chat rooms and the husband goes to online gambling sites; a lonely boy who becomes the victim of cyber-bullying through facebook; and finally a teenage boy who is first exploited by a cyber pimp when he is convinced to engage in online pornography and then exploited by a news reporter who convinces him to tell his story for the camera. They are all compelling stories and real food for thought. The actors are all very good. There is some nudity, adult language and situations, but I do recommend this movie if you can find it - it opened in limited release this weekend.

One day left in the weekend - should we keep celebrating? It makes turning another year older not quite so bad. Beside, I said it earlier this week and I meant it - this year I'm just grateful to be celebrating my birthday at all!