Living in the Past

Wednesday was my birthday, and I actually had a pretty good time. This was despite work being a complete disaster, with all manner of ridiculously, unreasonably crappy things going down during the day. It certainly helped that just about everyone in the building wished me well, which must be some weird Canadian politeness ritual. Several kind friends were also clever enough to get the various international time differences right and call me from overseas. That gave me an rolling case of the warm fuzzies, which were further enhanced by the raw sugar rush of the celebratory work birthday cupcakes (with far less than 31 candles on them, how kind).

My evening that day was all set to be the usual videogaming session with Ryan and Billy, with strawberry banana smoothies and a big bag o' nuts, but the guys were having none of it. We met at Commercial Skytrain and starting wandering the streets in search of a Thai restaurant Ryan had heard of, but never visited. We wandered randomly in the rain long enough for me to start considering getting a cab home and ordering a large pizza with double anchovies just for me, but luckily we rounded a corner and saw Bukowski's Bistro staring us right in the face.

Bukowski's was great, with excellent food, cool atmosphere and a live jazz trio jamming away three tables over. It's at 1447 Commercial Drive if you're in Vancouver, and I'll certainly be heading back there in the near future. Not bad for an evening that easily could've peaked eating someone's perpetually missing poodle in a dodgy Chinese restaurant somewhere in the area. We even had time to cab it back and get two solid hours of videogaming in before I headed home. Good stuff.