a break from tradition

for how many years now i have been celebrating my birthday in exactly the same way. i send my friends text messages with the following missive:

"spaghetti and chicken. my house"

friends from high school, college, and law school show up. and recently, office mates. we do the same thing - eat up a storm, drink till the wee hours of the morning.

it was a constant thing, and one i looked forward to every year. there is comfort in habit and tradition.

this year, however, was different. we didn't have a maid to clean up after the mess we were bound to make, and dennis (chief cook on my birthdays) was leaving for abroad the next day. he shouldn't get tired. and i was coming from work.

so my sister decided to just eat out.

i hesitated, initially. some of the hesitation sprung from my reluctance to spend so much, and some from my reluctance to break my birthday party tradition (a tradition in my head, that is).

we went anyways, my sister offering to foot the bill, and me convincing myself it was bound to be fun.

it was fun. we ended up in saisaki/dads/kamayan, eating buffet. there was a group of singers there, with 2 guitars and one big guitar (don't know what it's called). they serenaded us, we requested for "dancing queen" and "sasakyan kita" just for the heck of it.

then we played billiards. i played a bad game, but it was all in good fun. the bikini open at the billiard hall was not in good fun though. still, when we could ignore them already, we did.

i went home smiling, and happy. change is not a bad thing, i said to myself. sure we didn't get our spaghetti and chicken. or drink till morning. but the important elements were there -- two of my sisters, my brother in law, my sister's boyfriend, my friends who mattered - i couldn't ask for more.

thank you. this birthday will go down in the books as one of the best.