Ashley's 35th Birthday

I spent my birthday becoming acquainted with a new friend, the brittlebush. 

 

I put Felix down for a nap and spent a few glorious hours wandering around the desert with the plant ID book that Aaron got me for Christmas. I would use my Seek app to ID a plant, then look it up in the book. I also got some bird watching in. It was overwhelmingly pleasant. I am for the most part a very extroverted person, but I also enjoy doing stuff like this by myself from time to time. 

I gathered a haul of barrel cactus fruit while I was out, and baked it into a nice cake the next day. I've realized that I generally don't much like cooking unless it is with some strange ingredient, that was preferably hard to obtain. It makes it feel like more of an adventure. 

After my morning wanderings, I elected to check out a new Indian food place by the airport. It was delicious!

Felix heartily approved of the tikki masala and mango lassi

Life at 35 is pretty good! I have a fun group of friends who do silly things like making a cake using only grabber claw sticks:

We also had to eat the cake with the claws. It was hilarious. 

I'm also in 2 book clubs, in addition to a now-completed separate book club where we went all out with the Hunger Games series. My favorite was the book club meeting where Becci assembled a nerf arsenal and reaped us into groups to have cornucopia battles.