It’s usually around this time of year where I celebrate my birthday and subsequently go broke. I guess it’s one of those things when you’re entire family (except for my sister) are all Aries, and I’m the first one… Well, then you got my birthday on March 23, then my mother, then my father, TAX day (April 15th), then my wife, ending with my sister on May 31st, and now my Wedding Anniversary on June 3rd.

Caroline took me out on my birthday to Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill. Caroline chose to eat an herbed gouper, while I chose his signature herb-rubbed steak. Very good!

For Caroline’s birthday, we went with Godly and Rujin to Wined Up. This is a very impressive wine bar near Union Square/Flatiron area, where the entire wall is lined up from floor to ceiling with wine. We all started out with the cheese fondue and a flight of wines (3 each) each. It was a fun experience, esp. those who want a sampling of wine without cracking open full bottles.

For my mom, I went to Coach and bought her a purse. While my dad, I had promised to get golf shoes, without realizing how difficult of a feat that was. He has a very hard to get size, 7 1/2 EEE. Almost every place I asked said only Footjoy can make those, and they’re custom order. After nearly a month of digging around I finally found a pair of modern Oakley (which is pretty hot in my opinion) golf shoes in that size from Zappos.com. The best part was that if they didn’t fit, they pay for return by mail and will exchange them as well! My father took them golfing on a day after it rained and noted that since they are waterproof, it kept his feet nice and dry!

What’s interesting is that this year we had to file jointly in order to get the deductions for education and loans, but in the end for the first time, we didn’t get money back. We had to pay more tax.

My 1 year anniversary is coming up in June 3rd. We plan on going to the restaurant that we had our rehearsal dinner at, Rialto. They had good food and really good sangria! I highly recommend their Seared tuna (sushi grade) and their wasabi mashed potatoes. Some people suggested going to the place where I proposed, at Apple Bombar, but we’ve been going there lately a lot for their $5 drink specials. LOL. Caroline for my anniversary helped pay for some of my camera upgrade. I sold my Digital Rebel 300D, and used that money to upgrade to the Canon 30D. I plan on buying her something special, but that’s a secret!