a very happy birthday

Birthday was grand. Had a lovely Italian dinner with Amber; roasted salmon and tortelloni in cream sauce, plus chocolate ganache cake to die for. Yum!

Even though it was my birthday, she got some gifts too: I finally handed over the two corsets she commissioned from me months ago. They turned out beautifully, if I do say so myself. One is sleek black satin and the other is bone-colored silk shantung, with a monochrome lace-and-velvet trim along the top. I finished the insides by hand so they look as clean and professional inside as out. She wants to do some self-portraits in them so I hope to add the photos to my portfolio sometime in the next decade.

She gave me a lovely box-framed butterfly specimen. I managed to get a rather crappy scan of it at work.



Sabine and I like it. In my new office in Mom & Dad's house (which was my old office, and before that, my sister's room) I have cleared off the top of my desk and arranged all of my Fairweather memorabilia: antique bottles, a model human skull, some rusty skeleton keys, and a sepia-toned picture of a distinguished and forbidding-looking man who's standing in for Sabine's father. I hung the butterfly on the wall beside the desk, between a naturalist illustration of a vampire bat, and a sketch of a brain dissection from the late 18th century. It's cool.

It's also rather symbolic. A couple people asked me if I felt older, and the truth is I feel younger. I know I'm entering a new phase in my life, and I feel lighter, full of possibilities. I haven't felt like this since I graduated college at the ripe old age of 26, but I always love the sensation. I've come out of my cocoon this month. Wings are still wet, maybe, but if I can be really corny with a clich&eacute, I feel poised for flight.