Birthday dessert, birthday push-ups

I had a wonderful birthday. I received some fun gifts from Will and our parents (thank you!), had a relaxing day reading and talking with friends who called to wish me happy birthday (thank you!), and then Will treated me to dinner at Bondir (thank you!). Bondir is a restaurant in Cambridge I've been wanting to go to for years. It has a reputation for excellence and it definitely lived up to that reputation. It was impressive. All of the food was super tasty, but I honestly think my favorite part was the dessert.

We ordered their house hot chocolate (it was cold and rainy outside so it seemed fitting) and the Milk & Honey Genoise to share for dessert. The genoise was topped with Grapefruit Brulée, Tarragon Crème Fraiche, White Chocolate Crémeaux, and Anise Seed Lace Cookie (I had to copy that directly from the online menu because clearly my memory isn't going to capture all of that). We weren't sure what some of the words meant, but we knew we liked the ones we recognized so we went with it. Basically, all those words, when combined into one dish, just mean delicious. Delicious cake, delicious mystery sauces, delicious caramel-like crisps, delicious toasted citrus. Will said it's probably the best dessert he's ever had at a restaurant which might be true for me too. If nothing else, their hot chocolate was definitely the best hot chocolate I've ever had. It was topped with a spiced marshmallow cream that I loved. I've actually tried calling the restaurant to see if they'll tell me which spices were used in the marshmallow because I'd love to recreate it if I can. Here's hoping that works out.

It other news related to my birthday, I've decided since I'm now 31 I am going to do 31 push-ups every day in May. Will does push-ups nearly every day which kind of inspired this new little goal. He encouraged me to do pushups where my chest barely touches the ground before I push back up (I used to just touch my nose to the ground). Let me tell you, that extra inch or two inches makes it a lot harder for me! It's only the second day and my little armpit muscles are already aching and I still have 10 more pushups to do today. Yes, it's true. I have to space out my sets of 10 because I can't do 31 in one set. My arms get tired and I end up hovering, trying to push back up but instead I stall out and end up on the floor. So, I've been doing three set of 10 or 11 throughout the day. I'm hoping, though, that by the end of May I'll be able to do all 31 in one set. I'm not sure if that's overly ambitious; I guess we'll see.

Also, interesting fact: some lizards do push-ups. Apparently it's a show of force or strength. There's a bit more here in this video about an experiment that used a robo-lizard to study territorial behaviors among lizards.