Vacations, no matter how many weeks you take off, are always too short. Maybe a week is way too short, but that’s what we had, and if feels like we hardly got to do any relaxing. That’s really not true, since we decided to “staycation” and had at least two or three days set aside for simply hanging out. Anyway, this week off literally began with my birthday. Yes, it was my birthday. And I’m not afraid to tell the world I turned 33.

I began my celebratory week a day early, taking the day off so I could hang out by myself (Mikey went to daycare), and have lunch with my friend Iliki. We had a lovely lunch at Black Angus in Burbank, and of course, she told the wait staff it was my birthday, so I got the obligatory song and massive cookie topped with vanilla ice cream. It was quite yummy.

My birthdays have always been an opportunity for me to drag Trinity along on some sort of sightseeing trip, so this year, it was to the Queen Mary. I hadn’t been before, so it was a perfect opportunity.

The weather truly obliged me for my birthday week. The weather was warm, sunny and clear while we were in Long Beach, and it was that way for most of the week. The Queen Mary was pretty interesting — very cool architecture and history — but I’m not sure its worth the $24.95 adult ticket price. By the way, the “Ghosts and Legends” show was totally cheesy — think old school “Haunted Mansion effects inside a huge ship — but still fun nonetheless.

Besides the Queen Mary, we spent a day cleaning, watched two movies with previously bought Edwards discount movie tickets and a gift card to the Arclight (with Mikey going to daycare most of those three days), and of course went to the LA Zoo.

I think the weather actually got hot the day we went to the zoo, so even though we’d arrived maybe after noon, I was dizzy and a little achy by 3 p.m. But in that much time, we’d seen all the animals we wanted to see — the elephants, the giraffes, the gorillas, the chimpanzees and more. It was also an opportunity for Michael’s Nana to spend some time with him, uninterrupted — at church, he always goes to Paw-Paw.

Oh, but that wasn’t it.

It so happened that my buddy Marc was in town to cover the Yankees-Angels series, so we met up today for lunch and hanging out. My first idea was for us to meet up at the Getty Center, since Marc hasn’t been yet….but turns out its closed Mondays. Doh! So we ended up in Santa Monica, where the weather cleared up perfectly. It was a lovely end to a great vacation, but unfortunately an end nonetheless.