I will eat a spicy tuna roll

It is my birthday tomorrow. I will be twenty-six.

Twenty-six, I suspect, is not so very different from twenty-five. There are no added perks with this birthday as far as I can tell, but, equally, I do not see any real downside to it.

At work, each staff member's birthday is celebrated with a gourmet cupcake. I had been adamant that I did not want a birthday cupcake. "I appreciate the idea of it, but I will not eat it. I do not want $2.50 wasted on something that I will not even eat," I explained at lunch one day.

"I will eat it," a coworker piped up.

"Instead of a birthday cupcake," I suggested, "when we meet that morning to discuss our feelings, I would like to run around the circle and get birthday high-fives from everyone." The table was suddenly quiet. I would have felt uncomfortable if I was not so sure that everyone was secretly cursing themselves for not having that very same idea on their own birthday.

Today, my boss is taking me out to lunch for birthday sushi, even though it is a day premature. "If anyone asks," he stage whispered, "it is a business meeting because we are not supposed to celebrate birthdays beyond the birthday cupcake."

In reality, my birthday lunch is less about celebrating my birthday and more about my boss's desire to try the sushi place down the street. "I've heard they have all you can eat!" he'd exclaimed one day. Ever since finding that out, he's been trying to casually lure a group of people over there for lunch. "You know what would be fun to do one day?" he has asked on more than one occasion, "if we were to go to that sushi place down the street and get some lunch!" He's also been known to throw out a casual, "Hey, how about, when we're going to have a meeting or something, we go to that sushi place down the street and just go over some notes. It will be lots of fun."

I do not trust his judgement when it comes to fun things though. Other things he has told me are high in "fun factor": Silent auctions, breakfast meetings, investment seminars, board meetings, award presentations and getting insurance quotes.