So I'm officially 31, and it's a nice feeling so far. Hopefully my 31st year will be better than the mind-fuck that my 30th turned out to be.

On my birthday last Thursday I finally got to go to Ecopolitan, a vegan restaurant in uptown Minneapolis that I have been salivating over for months (ever since I saw the Yellow Pages ad), but had never actually visited. My friend Anna went with me. She's pretty adventurous cuisine-wise, I suppose, but she is definitely not a vegan, vegetarian, or anything in between. She does enjoy her meat and potatoes, that one. But since it was my birthday, she agreed to go with me after some blackmailing and a little bribery, and she even paid. She had quite a different experience of the food there than I did (she hated it), but, as I pointed out to her, all she had was a salad--and a cabbage salad at that (who eats cabbage salad? That really is rabbit food). I, on the other hand, enjoyed a raw pizza (they don't cook anything over 105 degrees there because, it's like, healthier or something). The pizza consisted of a buckwheat crust (awesome), spread with spicy red avocado sauce, sprouts, finely sliced green peppers, and pine nuts (yes, pine nuts! They rock!) All this and a side of grapes, too. Anna tried some of my pizza and she liked it (again, I told her to order more than a damn cabbage salad), but she declined. I'm glad it was my birthday, because it was the only way I could have gotten her to go there with me. I don't think she'll be a repeat customer, but I will definitely be back--give me some carrot juice and raw pizza! Woo hoo! I'll be so healthy I'll be shitting whole cucumbers.

Since I finally got paid (no more donations please, but I'll leave the Honor System icon up a bit longer in case you really really want to), I was able to buy a new bike as a birthday present to myself. It's a very cute little hot pink mountain bike that kicks all kinds of ass, even though it's a bit girly. I think I'll name it Christine, after the murderous car in the Stephen King book. I like the idea of having a deadly hot pink bike.