14 And Growing

One of the important dates for me is August 27 because it is my son's birthday. And I know that the next day is my hire date at Kaiser. So for this year, we are celebrating my son's 14th year in this world, and my 7th at Kaiser.

First of all, I would just like to make one thing formal. Since my son graduated from St. Joseph in June, and he is now in an even bigger school (Bellarmine), I'd like him to be known as JAKE. As a matter of fact, Bellarmine already acknowledged Jake when they used this name in his school email address. And that is perfectly fine. I'd like him to shed the old James from his elementary days, and, instead, be known now as a young gentleman, with a cool name, Jake.

So, Jake it is.

Anyway, Jake is an easy-going young man. He didn't have anything particular in mind for his birthday. Not even a party or small gathering. He had something impromptu a couple of weeks before his birthday, but only less than a handful made it. And again, that was perfectly fine.

For his birthday, all he wanted was to have dinner at Pizza Antica in Santa Row. It was the second week in school, and his Hebrew Scriptures class greeted him that day. On our way to Santana Row, the wife called in to place our name on the list. However, she was informed that the restaurant was closed for a private party. Ooooppss!!! The birthday boy won't be happy. He was napping in the car on the way. We woke him up and told him the bad news. He was a bit disappointed, but there was nothing we can all do. We settled for Maggiano's.

Knowing Maggiano's, you'd be lucky if the wait was under an hour. We tried, and we were told it was about 45 minutes. In the meantime, we sat around the bar area, and started with appetizers and drinks. Halfway through, we were informed our table was ready. Either the time flew by so quickly, or it was less than 45 minutes. More like 30. The wife went in and secured the table, while Jake and I finished up and closed our tab.

Whenever we are at Maggiano's, we always did family-style, which meant ordering from the prix fixe menu. To me, it was more bang for your buck. And food was always more than we can handle. That night, we decided against it, and ordered ala carte. Save for a salmon dish, everything else was pasta. We even doubled on the lasagna. What we didn't know was that for every past we ordered (from their Classic menu), we had one other to go. Since we ordered two lasagnas, we had two others to go. Not a bad deal.

We were stuffed to the gills with all the pasta we had, and there was no room for dessert. But we certainly had extras for dinner the next day. While we were waiting for our meal, we would hear people singing "Happy Birthday". Jake would look at us and say that he didn't want such attention, and persuaded us not to have the servers sing. But his mom managed to sneak one on him when our server brought him some cookies and a few candles to blow -- minus the singing, of course. And he was fine with that.

It was a pretty long day. By the time we left Maggiano's it was almost 10. As we drove off, our birthday boy snoozed at the back of the car probably because he was tired or he had too many to eat. Either way, he's now a year older, and, hopefully, wiser.