Blogging my birthday

Not too much to report around these parts...

... except that I've turned 26 today! This is the first birthday I cringed at a little. 26? 25 sounds so much younger doesn't?

Of course I'm not old, but I'm married now which as someone pointed out on Facebook is like being in my 30s anyway ;)

I keep thinking of this lyric, "You're scared and you're thinking that maybe we ain't that young anymore/Show a little faith there's magic in the night/You ain't a beauty but hey you're alright/That's alright with me."

Just the fact that I'm quoting Bruce Sprinsteen makes me a middle aged man, doesn't it?

Emily's rules to a good birthday

1. There are seven specific people I expect a phone call from on my birthday (not including Jeff): My mom, my dad, my brother, Katie, Meg, Justin and Andrew. 2:41 p.m. and we're batting .000. (Although Katie did hit me up on gchat.)

2. A good meal. Jeff is taking me to the Capital Grille. Need I say more? I looooove it there.

3. A nice card from the husband. Don't cards that start, "Happy Birthday to my wife" just feel so much better? Swoon.

4. A day off. Done.

5. Everything I want and no one gets to argue: Pending.

6. A really fabulous present! I already got a new jacket from my mom when she came to visit last week. I really love it and feel fab in it. Also...

DID I MENTION I GOT AN iPHONE YESTERDAY??

She's so beautiful. We haven't named her yet, but I didn't know true love until I pulled her out of Jeff's back pocket. I've wanted an iPhone since they came into existence, but we had to wait out our Verizon contract and now I have her! She's purple and pink, she's a 3G S, even though I told Jeff he didn't have to get the S.

Seriously, all my old phones pale in comparison. I'm not a materialistic person. I own very few things of real value. So this was very exciting for me!!

Here's our first iPhone pic. I think I've mastered this already!

What's the one thing YOU want for your next birthday?

Turn and face the change

People ask me all the time, "How is married life?"

It's pretty annoying actually. But that's probably because I hate small talk.

Married life is fine. It's great. It's lovely. It's pretty much exactly the same.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy calling Jeff my husband. That's a perk. I tried it out for a few months, though, before I actually did get married, to random people I'd never see again, or people over the phone. I used it for the first time in England when Jeff put the parking break on while we were driving. "Miss," I said to a woman standing outside her cul de sac home. "My husband is a moron, can you help us?"

My husband is not a moron, for the record. But things haven't changed that much. Oh, I've put on 10 of the 20 pounds I lost. Jeff and I have made up for months of dieting with a few months of gorging. It's hard to lose weight without a big to-do like a wedding to get your butt in gear. I'm currently accepting applications for motivating events.

I love seeing Jeff with his wedding ring on. When he has it on. He likes to play with it, move it around in his hands, drop it on the floor. Drives me nuts. I say, "You can't lose it if you don't take it off." I suspect we'll learn that lesson the hard way some day.

I suppose the argument for not living with each other before you get married is just for this reason. That nothing changes. Of course, I would never go back and time and take away all Jeff and I experienced in our three years of living together. We've learned a lot about each other.

For instance, Jeff learned that I don't like to clean. I learned that Jeff doesn't like to clean. We learned that our house would probably never ever be clean, unless motivated by someone coming over, or a stench in the kitchen sink.

We learned that it was impossible to share one blanket. His body temperature is much higher than mine, plus I steal the blanket. That's why we have two. Just normal married life.

Perhaps a smooth transition was best. Neither of us like change all that much.

Getting married was just the first step for our many goals. Get married. Get a house. Find jobs we love (I have, he hasn't). See Italy. See Hawaii. See France, Spain, Germany. Maybe along the way have a ... no, mom, not yet.

So nothing's changed. Except that my life has started. Except that I'm officially an adult now. Except that the man I love more than anything agreed to stay with me forever.

Other than that, status quo.

How have the last three months of your life been?

At the Movies with Emily and Jeff: The Invention of Lying

I love pretty much everything Ricky Gervais does. I pretty much kiss the ground he walks on. Extras, the Office, the podcasts he does -- brilliant. These few hours of TV/radio are probably 50% of the hardest laughs I've ever had in my life. We're also going to see his standup in November at the NYC comedy festival.

So when his first ever movie was coming out -- yeah, I was going to be going to see that opening night. (Thanks Jackie and Andrew for joining us!)

Now, I wasn't that psyched on the trailer. In fact, I thought the trailer looked downright disappointing. But I know that Ricky doesn't always love to go all out on comedy, he can get serious and messagey in his delivery (see: Extras and Office finale) which can be great. So I was kind of hoping that was the deal here.

(Here's where we pick up spoilers, so don't read on if you don't want to know main plot points. There's really no twists in this movie, so you're probably OK.)

Though the trailers cleverly disguised it, this was a movie about atheism. Ricky Gervais is an outspoken atheist, obviously it's an area where we differ. As the man who figures out how to lie, he tells his mother on her deathbed that there's no reason to be afraid to die, because there's a big man in the sky, and all your loved ones, and you live in a mansion and you're happy forever. After he says this, word spreads about "new information about what happens after you die" and he becomes famous.

It's not subtle, what he does here. And that's fine. It's fair. I think he presents it honestly: religion and God (not mutually exclusive), whether you believe in It or not, is something that can give many people great comfort in times of sadness. It can also cause people to do things or act a certain way based only on what they believe might happen after they die. Is that right? Of course it all depends on what they're doing. In this movie, for example, Ricky's two friends are alcoholics and loners, who don't care about improving their current lot in life because they're just waiting for their mansion in the sky.

I'm not going to get into the religious implications, because it just comes down to a difference of opinion. He's definitely being "blasphemous" and he toes the line of being disrespectful for disrespectufulness sake, but since I knew the subject matter going in, I wasn't wildly offended. I've always taken my faith as something I chose, I believe in, that gives ME comfort, and will agree to disagree with everyone who feels differently.

OK -- moving on. Is the movie good? Yes, it's good. It's not great. I think movies are destined to fall short when they hang on such an absolute -- a word where no one lies. But, really, it's not just a world where no one lies -- it's a world where everyone tells you the honest truth and has no filter. And that's for comic effect, but sometimes it is just too much. A lot of the same jokes and lines are used over and over, and I think it could have used a slight rewrite to smooth the bumps in the writing. The acting is good, the cameos by some great actors is fantastic (including one you'll never expect!). The storyline between Ricky and Jennifer Garner's character is a bit strange, it doesn't quite work given that Garner's character seems to have a one track mind. She's almost like a robot.

There's one scene in the movie that makes it worth it. Ricky's reading his version of the 10 commandments (off pizza boxes no less) and I laughed so hard at a few of the moments I almost cried. I wish there had been more of that.

Overall, it's a little too soapboxy, not quite funny enough to make up for it, and falls short of it's HUGE objective... it feels a little false. Ironically.

Final ranking: Two and a half Werschaibles.