A Very Nice Birthday

It's been a very nice birthday, all things considered. Low key, but just... nice. I didn't do much all morning, but had so many wonderful birthday greetings, both in e-mail and on Facebook. It makes you feel really warm inside to hear from so many nice people. Ned, of course, sent the famous birthday song that gets played whenever anybody has a birthday! I'm sure The Sportsmen, who originally recorded this when they were performing regularly on TV shows like The Jack Benny Show back in the 1950s, would be amazed to discover that it is still being played today--by us, if nobody else! My father bought that 78 rpm record in the 1950s (the back side is an anniversary song that I don't think we have ever played), it passed to me after he died and I gave it to Ned, who got it into mp3 format and posted on the internet! Jeri also sent me a copy of her arrangement of the traditional happy birthday song that she arranged last year.

Walt had gone off to his usual early morning "Old timers" breakfast, with some friends that he worked with for years. When he came home, he gave me a copy of James Shapiro's "A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare," which I had heard about several years ago and thought that it sounded interesting.

At 11:30 I went downtown and met my friend Ruth for lunch. Ruth is such a neat lady. She's always been one of my favorite people. We met each other first years and years ago (back in 2000, I believe) when we were both working at the homeless shelter here in town. She was, at that time, known around town as "Granny Muffin," as she had a 15 minute kids' program on local television twice a week.

You could always spot her car around town by the astroturf and all the little plastic figurines on the roof and on the dashboard. I liked her instantly. I knew she was "my kinda people."

We both left the homeless shelter and I didn't see her for years. We ran into each other once at a cafe or somewhere where we agreed we should get together sometime, but in the way that casual friends do not, we didn't.

But she has recently written a book, "The Weight of Gold" and Derrick asked if I'd like to do a story about her and the book. I jumped at the chance. It was very comfortable and much fun to sit with her and talk with her again. We said again that we should get together more often, but this time we had a plan. I went home and decided that my birthday gift to myself would be taking Ruth to lunch, and so we went to a local Chinese buffet. It was nice to sit and chat and eat and we decided at the end to try to have lunch together every couple of weeks. We are set again for March 3.

There were birthday cards in the mail when I got home and I decided to take a nap and sleep off the chow mein. I was awakened by the dogs barking at the delivery guy who left off a lovely bouquet of flowers from Brianna.

Then there was a nice telephone call from Peggy. It was morning of February 18 in Australia and afternoon of February 17 here, so we were both celebrating our birthdays, as her birthday is the 18th. It was nice to talk with her, as usual. She was ironing. I was not.

Walt came home and we watched a believe it or not exciting game of Olympic curling between the US and Switzerland. I was surprised at how into the game I got! (The US lost, unfortunately.)

Before we went to dinner, Tom made a Skype call and we got to watch Bri dancing and playing with her toys. I sang a Disney song for her.

While I was talking to them, both Ned and Walt's mother called, so I called them back before we left the house. I had a nice (brief) chat with Walt's mother, but Ned must have gone out. Still, it was nice that both called.

While I was waiting in the car, I checked my cell phone messages and there were two, one from Jeri and one from Phil.

We had dinner at Outback Steak House, which I'd always wanted to try. I left my camera at home, but the cell phone helped me out. We started with some crab-stuffed shrimp.

And then I had a fantastic filet, topped with what they called a "horseradish crumble" that was really quite tasty and not at all spicy hot.

We came home to more birthday greetings (between Facebook, e-mail, g-mail and a group or two to which I belong, I must have had more than 100 well wishes, which is really quite humbling!).

All in all, it was just a wonderful day.