The Week Long Birthday

Last week was my birthday (and my twin sister Sarah's). On Tuesday, to be precise. But the actual breakdown went more like this:

Midnight Monday/Early morning Tuesday: I received my Christmas present early from my fiance, Dave, because my birthday present got tangled up in some courier delivery drama. It's the Harry Potter Wizard's Collection, and oh boy... it's a gorgeous, gorgeous box set that covers every aspect of the movies, but just looking at it makes me feel guilty. I could never, ever spend that kind of money of a luxury for myself and the fact that someone else did just makes me feel even guiltier. I am not very good at receiving expensive presents.

My technique for photographs is mostly 'look startled'.

"Happy 21st Emma & Sarah"

Tuesday: A package just arrived in this post with a card, in French, and I looked at it like 'French?' because I don't know anyone in France. Turns out my best friend school made me an AWESOME hand-knitted Sherlock Scarf. I spent that morning in my pyjamas and a Sherlock scarf, and I regret nothing.The card also contained the commands 'gayly celebrate this agreeable event' which is always a good plan. Later that afternoon, Dave fitted multicoloured remote-controlled LEDs to the bottom of the bed and now our room becomes a rave at the push of a button.

In the evening, I went to a birthday buffet at my parents house. There was an awesome cake and an even more awesome 'Happy Birthday' banner on the way to their house.

Crepe with Malteaser Ice Cream

Wednesday: Went to for a birthday meal at a swanky Inverness restaurant with my lovely friends. The highlights of the meal were a lovely (but pricey) strawberry daiquiri, wood pigeon, and a crepe wrapped around Malteaser ice cream.

Thursday: THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT ARRIVED. I received Castiel, a desktop PC more powerful than my wildest dreams: built like a gaming machine but also capable of handling all my writing, art and multitasking without flinching. He was bought for me because my loyal Macbook workhorse, despite several resuscitation attempts, was on his last legs (and because I'd been craving a bit of PC gaming).

In all seriousness, though, I am extremely lucky that Dave and Josh put this machine together for me. It's absolutely fantastic, and because I didn't build him, there's a whole load of awesomeness in this machine that I'd never dare spend on myself. Here are the specs, for bragging rights:

Machine name: CASTIELProcessor: AMD FX(tm)-6100 Six-Core Processor (6 CPUs), ~3.3GHz
Memory: 8192MB RAM Corsair 'Vengeance' RAM
Card name: AMD Radeon HD7770 (Black Edition)
C Drive (LEVIATHAN): Model: Seagate Barracuda 1TB

And an awesome Logitech Wave wireless keyboard was supplied to finish off the machine, by my friend Allan.

So if I disappear from the Internet, you can rest assured I'm in my room on this beast of a machine. So far, my Friday and weekend has consisted of building a bookshelf, playing Borderlands 2, playing Bastion (love <3), and supervising Josh's addition of extra case fans and a non-stock CPU cooler (read: new shiny bits) to Castiel.