pure Delite

Yesterday was the best birthday I've had in years, maybe ever. Throughout the day, everyone was very nice to me: plenty of kind words, a few cards, a yummy berry-covered torte that we all shared as a department. It was a nice day.

All the while, I was getting more and more antsy to find out exactly what it was Amanda had up her sleeve for me that evening. She'd been anxiously telling me how excited she was for my birthday to arrive for about a week or so.

Now, for those who don't know me, some backstory:

I grew up outside of Philadelphia. My mom had a tradition with birthdays. Whoever was having the birthday got to pick whatever they wanted for dinner that night. We called it, predictably enough, the Birthday Dinner. It's a nice tradition and one I hope to do with my own kids someday.

Anyway, just up the street from my old house was a pizza place called Italian Delite. I LOVE their pizza; always have. To me, this is the greatest pizza place in the world. Something about the scalding sauce, the molten cheese, the wafer thin crust - everything about it is perfect, as far as I'm concerned. When I'd come home from England during college, we'd sometimes have to stop off at Italian Delite before we even made it home. It's awesome, and it's one of the biggest things I missed about moving away from Philly to the West Coast.

So, (still in backstory here), every year for my birthday I picked Italian Delite pizza as my Birthday Dinner. Without fail. Every year, that was it. No question. Since I moved out to California, I've been struggling to make do and figure out other favorite meals that I like on my birthday, but I've always missed the traditional Italian Delite pizza.

::wavy visual effects and whole-tone scale::

Flashback over. The original plan for last night was as follows:

Come home, cook some tacos with Amanda, sit down together and watch Defending Your Life. A great little birthday plan. I was really looking forward to it.

However, when I walked in the door last night, Amanda wouldn't let me near the kitchen. I sat down at the dining room table and she asked:
"Smell like tacos?"
To which I relied, "[Yummy sound] Yeah, sure does."
To which she replied "No, it doesn't."

Before I know it, she pulls a pizza out of the oven. At this point, I'm very confused. She asked me to come over and check it out, something I don't have to be asked twice to do when it involves pizza. When I got closer to it, I could smell it ... I could smell the very familiar scent of what I never thought would be hanging out in my house.

Sure enough, there in front of me, was a genuine Italian Delite pizza. The molten cheese, the delicious scalding sauce, the wafer thin crust ... It was absolutely perfect.

I'll let Amanda tell the specifics of how she pulled it off. Suffice it to say that she's incredible and organized a Herculean effort to get this thing out here.

And I officially went ape-shit over it.

As I'm freaking out and still flabbergasted that I'm eating an Italian Delite pizza on my birthday again, Amanda then proceeds to give me my birthday present of a Sirius Satellite Radio, which I then proceeded to completely refreak out over as well.

So, now thoroughly astonished and feeling very sufficiently birthdayed up, we went out, picked up Defending Your Life, and spent the rest of the night curled up together watching it.

It was a great birthday and I can't express enough how lucky I am to have such a caring woman in my life as Amanda.

Thank you, Manda. You really made me feel special. Thanks for giving me such an incredible birthday.