Seeking PFT (Price Family Time)

Being the quietly-brooding-devastatingly-handsome-dry-humored man that he is, there’s probably a lot you don’t know about RP. And one of those is this: He LOVES taking tests on his birthday.

Consequently, I have never spent a bona fide birthDAY with RP. You might recall that last April 30th found our young hero up to his neck in a week-long make-it-or-break-it exam project for his Master’s Degree. This year? The debonair overachiever spent the big 34 in an all-day review class for his upcoming real estate broker’s exam.

What with RP’s quest to be a broker and my new job (requiring me to learn what a broker actually is), we’ve been experiencing some major Price adjustments. For instance, Monday night featured a certain wife in a terrible mood due to traffic on the 405 and her newly-destroyed gym schedule. Tuesday night found this young married couple having dinner together in the conference room of an Orange County financial building on the wife’s way home from yet another Orange County financial building.

I guess you could say that real estate crushed these California Prices.

Nonetheless, RP allotted me three glorious hours with which to celebrate his birthday. So I made the most of it.

Some say love is a river. I say love is spending 3 hours, four bowls, a saucepan, a skillet, a food processor and a spring form pan on a flourless dark chocolate hazelnut torte, complete with chocolate ganache and fresh-roasted nuts. RP was the gracious recipient of this culinary marvel, showing his appreciation by eating ¾ of it in 24 hours.

Since it wouldn’t be a party without candles and presents, I risked the ever-feared California brush fire by lighting each of RP’s 34 candles.

As you’ve heard, there ain’t no party like a Price family party, so RP and I celebrated solo with a quiet evening at the Vintage Steakhouse in San Juan Capistrano. Having passed on the decadence of the chocolate torte, I made up for that morning’s gym session by consuming and entire gravy boat of hollandaise sauce (and never looking back).
All in all, it was a lackluster way to celebrate the birth of one of Earthdom’s most benevolent (and attractive) forces. Here’s to you, RP, and to several more (test-taking or otherwise) birthdays.