Today is Mr. W’s birthday. Hippo birdie, Mr. Double-You! If I had double yous, I’d stand in the middle and make a sandwich. Or make both of you make me a sandwich. Yeah, that’s probably more likely.

He didn’t want to have a birthday celebration this year, so I just got him something he asked for, a book with accompanying CD-Rom of Photoshop CS3 tutorials and tricks for editing portraits. He’s going to do our wedding album all by himself! I know Flip Flop Girl is doing her and Wilco‘s on her own, but I wouldn’t attempt it. This is right up Mr. W’s alley, though, the computer and digital photography addict that he is. While I was at the bookstore selecting his tutorial book, I came across a cookbook that’s also an informative introduction to traditional Indian cooking. Mr. W and I had talked about having theme-week cooking when we got married, and we’ve been on an Indian food kick this week, so this was perfect to add as the “surprise” element of his gift.

I don’t really know whether we’d ever go through with food theme-week, but it’s fun to think about. We’d go grocery shopping on the weekend at an ethnic grocery store, and all that week we’d cook that ethnicity’s food. We’d have Chinese food week, Indian food week, Italian, Japanese, and American. We were having Indian food after work today (his chosen birthday meal) and I suddenly thought, “What category of food does pizza fall into?” He said it could be American. So American week is gonna be pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers, fried chicken, soul food, Cajun shrimp. Eclectic. And then another brainstorm. “Ooh,” I said, “We can change our kitchen and eating area decor weekly to match the food theme. And then when people come over, they’ll know immediately what week it is and if they don’t like Mexican, they’ll know not to stay for dinner.”
Mr. W added, “And we can use that strategically, so when someone we don’t want to have dinner with comes over, we can change the decoration to something we know they won’t eat.”
So of course I thought of MOH Vicky and her resolute dislike of Indian food, since no one else I know has a food category they claim they absolutely would not eat. So I guess it’d be like, “Hey, Vicky’s coming! Quick, help me take down this Chinese stuff and put the Indian plates up! Where’s that golden statuette of Durga?” Haha. Guess our friends are gonna have to learn to like whatever we make if they’re just gonna drop by.