The Blue 52

Chocolate dessert! Refer to caption.

Our Friday night dessert, one for each of us: Chocolate Terrine on graham cracker crust with ganache, blackberry cheesecake ice cream, blackberry sauce, and a real blackberry on top.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: last Friday was my birthday, which I usually note here with gratitude for another year of survival. For years I assumed when I turned 52 I’d celebrate with some geektastic solipsism involving that very number’s use as a recurring DC Comics motif. I had at least one whole anecdote lined up and everything. So far the closest we’ve come to living out any DC homage is the cosmic irony of having the entire lead-up week disrupted by, to put it horridly, a major character death.

The week was instead overshadowed by the unexpected passing of my cousin Shawn on Mother’s Day at age 50, two years younger than me. I never throw parties anyway, but I begged off some of our traditions with hopes of resuming them next year — no evening spent entirely on Facebook (the only social media system remotely nice about birthdays), no one-day road trip with my wife Anne away from Indianapolis, and no ice cream cake. I never post about the ice cream cake, but it’s usually my thing.

Nevertheless we tried to find and/or create some bright spots where we could throughout the week. Mostly I mean food.

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