Birthdays and Doll Stuff and Shopping, Oh My!

09 Sep, 2025

Birthday Party

This past Saturday I had the opportunity to go to a birthday party at a Teppanyaki (also known erroneously in the US as "hibachi") restaurant for the first time! This is one of those Japanese restaurants where the chef cooks on a flat grill right in front of you at the table. They do some silly little tricks and jokes, like rolling an egg across the grill as an "eggroll," lol. Our table had 13 people crammed in (I think it's more designed for like, ten people), but we managed.

The chef cooked a ton of food for us all; fried rice, noodles, vegetables, mushrooms, and our meats of choice (I got salmon). Oh and before all that we had a delicious onion soup, and salad, although I skipped the salad because I knew I wouldn't eat much of it. It was just as well because there was so much food I couldn't eat it all anyway!

At the end, there was birthday cake, of course, and the employees came out with a drum and tambourine and sang their rendition of Happy Birthday, first in English, then again in Japanese. The cake was really yummy; it was in my opinion a perfect ratio of icing to sponge and sweet but not too sweet. All-in-all it was a great time!

Birthday Gamble

Yesterday, I went with roomie to take a good friend of hers (and of mine now) out to the Hard Rock Casino for her birthday (she was one of two birthday people at the previously mentioned party). She's ... 83? I think? Anyway she used to go to the Hard Rock several times a week when her husband was alive, but she can't afford it since his passing. She has a hard time getting around at all to be honest, is usually on a cane or walker, so she doesn't get out much.

So, roommate conspired with this friend's daughter to give her some money and take her out to play the slot machines. We also went to dinner at Golden Corral. She said she had fun although it did tire her out! It was really a nice time. 😄

Tragedy

So the Publix (grocery store) we shop at is in a shopping center that's... chaotic to say the least. People speed through the parking lot, they ignore the stop signs, they park in the fire lanes constantly. No one ever enforces the traffic laws in there, and it was only a matter of time before someone got hurt.

Well, yesterday, on our way to take our friend out, we passed by this shopping center. There were about half a dozen cop cars with lights flashing all down the main thoroughfare of the place, and yellow crime scene tape spanning several hundred feet of it.

Turns out some poor guy got hit by a car in the crosswalk. I'll spare you the details but it was really bad, and he did not survive. The driver fled, but supposedly he's been arrested.

I know I'll be a lot more alert walking through that crosswalk in future. 😢

Doll Stuff

In much happier news, I got doll mail today! It was a package from eBay that included white doll socks, little white sandals that I plan to paint rainbow to match my real ones, a little jack-o-lantern lantern that actually lights up (so cute!!), a jack-o-lantern Halloween candy bucket, an inflatable beach ball (can't wait to take beach photos!), and little tortoise-shell, cat-eye sunglasses that I plan to mod to look like my real glasses. 😊

That aside, I also won an eBay auction for a Marie-Grace American Girl doll! It was a little more than I really should have been spending at the moment, but she's the one I plan to customize into a 'mini me' and I'm so excited. She hasn't shipped yet, unfortunately, but should soon. I can't wait! I won't be able to get her wig and eyes swapped out for a while, so I'm gonna fix up her hair and clean her up and enjoy her as-is for a while. She can model some of the doll clothes I've accumulated so far! Although I do need to get some pants of some kind first. 😆

Solo Outing

I was able to get a haircut recently, and my god I feel so much better. I also dyed the ends of my hair fuschia, and it looks really cool. I'll try to get a pic soon. ❤️

Along with the haircut, I spent some time in Michael's craft store, and Target. Finally got a glue gun for crafting, as well as a super tiny detail paintbrush that's made my life much easier, lol. I also got some glow-in-the-dark skulls that are designed to be "decorative filler" in vases and such. I wish I'd gotten a couple packs of these, because now I want to use them to fill my Crystal Head Vodka skull-shaped bottle! Maybe I'll make it back there before they get rid of them.

In Target, I wandered a bit, but of course the sections I was most interested in were Halloween, which wasn't stocked very well yet, and the 18" dolls! Target's brand is Our Generation, which are pretty cute themselves although I don't like them nearly as much as American Girl. Still, I wouldn't mind having one or two in the future. I had kind of hoped the two Halloween dolls I mentioned a couple posts ago would be in stock, but despite the website saying they had one of each in stock, they were completely missing in action. I really wanted Selene, the dark-skinned one in the orange and black costume, the most.

Alas, I wasn't able to get a doll, but I did get a few of the Our Generation blind boxes as a consolation prize, lol. They're cute; they all come with a little bag of some kind and different contents based on a given theme (i.e. travel, or spa day, etc.).

To be perfectly honest I've spent more than I should recently on doll stuff. It became a bit addictive, though I think I've mostly got it under control again. 😵‍💫 Now that I've bought my Marie Grace/eventual mini me, I'm going to try to not spend much for a while to get caught up. My next big purchase I think will be one of those doll trunks I discovered with the inbuilt murphy bed. I'm really looking forward to customizing that. 😁 I've gotten loads of neat ideas from American Girl and miniature channels on YouTube! Special shoutout to Always Dolls for their incredible doll crafts!

Good lord is that everything? I think so. Sheesh.

Oh by the way you can leave comments on this journal right here, if you care to. 👍