The bright lights of Ottawa

A long time ago, we established the premise of birthday month to celebrate our special days in the Ottawacker household, so as we entered February, I realized with a jolt that it was my own time to celebrate and nothing had been organized.

Let me preface this by saying I've never really got on board with the concept of celebrating my own birthday. I think this comes from my father who refused to acknowledge his birthday for many years and, following decades of browbeating, referred to it solely as "Present Day". For years we'd invite people round for dinner - but once Ottawacker Jr. was born, I resigned myself to the fact that my biological relevance was finished and I was either over the hill or home free, depending on the attitude I wanted to adopt. And this year, knowing my main gift has been permission to go away to warmer climes for a long period of time to write, I settled for a discreet "birthday weekend". 

As always, weekends are the busiest days of the week: Ottawacker Jr. was invited to another birthday party in the afternoon, Mrs Ottawacker had some serious shopping to do, and Liverpool were playing Southampton (at 10 a.m. local time). It was all panning out nicely, and improved by a nice Skype call with the Victoria McGuffins.

Anyway, around 5 o'clock, we decided to go out for dinner, and settled for the old favourite La Favorita in Little Italy. They have a real fire pizza oven in the corner which not only produces great calzones and pizzas, but keeps you warm and distracts Ottawacker Jr. from the dessert menu.