Monday, April 26, 2004
MANY HAPPY RETURNS
Let’s recognize right up front that my wife and friends are by a wide margin the greatest people ever anywhere in history. I had a spectacularly awesome time for my birthday and I’ll be looking back on recent events with overwhelming gratitude and appreciation for as long as my neurons are firing.
All I’d wanted to do for my birthday was to get myself and the house cleaned up a little, do some important paperwork that would make me feel more on top of my game, get TiVo on line and to eat very well. Mission accomplished - plus.....
Supper saturday night was exceptional - the Buckeye has never let me down. Three big courses, four big cheerful drinks (was that a tankard of the ‘97 Sandeman they poured for us?), and a beautiful room overlooking Richardson Bay. Everything had been prepared to perfection and I ate unto - nay, beyond - satiety. Braised artichoke with tarragon sauce, oysters bingo (broiled in the shell with cheese and spinach), fillet mignion and then a fat slice of S’more Pie: it’s been my experience that most things with the word “S’more” in their names don’t really do their namesake justice, but I swear to you, s’mores aspire to be as good as this pie was. Kel had a lovely sundae with cinnamon ice cream, served in one of those parfait glasses that’s broad at the top but gets deep and narrow at the bottom. It took her a long time to make any headway on her dessert because most of the bulk of it was on top, but once she’d gotten past that it didn’t last long. With my pie, however, I started at the pointed end and the more I ate the wider the pie got, till by the time I got near the end I was overwhelmed by how much was left. Not that I didn’t finish it, mind you. Gluttony is an acquired trait and I’ve been working on it for 40 years now.
Once we got back home we enjoyed half an hour of my new Family Guy dvds (thanks Kel) and then I fell thoroughly asleep, dreaming of good things. These began to take fruition with a leisurely and very pleasant sunday morning that included both lounging and dawdling, as well as a brisk run with Kel (thanks Kel, good idea) around Stow Lake, then a nice dog walk, then some stumbling around as I got ready for a quiet brunch at Heidi and Andy’s place.
Kel seemed anxious that we get there close to “on time” - this, together with the fact that I was dealing with Heidi (who throws surprise parties) set off some buried alarms in my brain but the rest of me was too relaxed to pay attention. I really had no clue that there was anything happening till I got in the front door and 25 of my best friends shouted “surprise” to me. For the next five hours I let people pour me excellent wines, feed me outstanding and widely various foods of both sweet and savory varieties specifically chosen for my own preferences and tastes, and ply me with goodies and gifties which I love very much. I soaked in a redwood hot tub as children scrambled hither and yon and felt extremely lucky. These are really smart, funny, busy people, and that they pulled together to party for my birthday means a lot to me.
(My best line from the party: two people were discussing The Lion King - The Musical, which is coming to town or has just opened, and it’s hard to get tickets. I scoffed, “you know what really gets me - it’s not even an original show. All they did was take Hedwig and change the costumes.")
Eventually we packed up the car with loot and Kel spirited me back home - where I pulled the ol’ audio tape deck out of the media cabinet and re-wired things generally so that all the different components are plugged in and TiVo is ready to activate. We can even run the DVD player through the stereo now without distortion, which we couldn’t do before. The VCR is set up to tape off TiVo or straight off the cable. I didn’t even shock myself once. Except when I stepped back and realized I’d done it all, and correctly, too.
Furthermore, I’m up to 1100 songs on the iPod - which we listened to in the car on the drive to the East bay for the surprise brunch party, and on the way back home, and then out to the east bay again sunday night to watch the Sopranos with Dave and Kim. I got to put Daisy into her jammies (her request, I think) (come on man she’s like 28 months old) and we closed out the weekend with a healthy dose of tension, confrontation and violence, HBO-style. It’s our own little ceremony to conclude our weekends, and this time it seemed particularly satisfying.
So in the end I got everything out of my birthday I could have wanted, and one hell of a lot more. Thank you so much, everybody, for thinking of me and boosting the energy I was enjoying. It calls to mind that I recently received the gift of a volume of poetry which I opened to a random page on friday; the poem I read there was moving and passionate, and it ended with words I thought might possibly be prophetic:
“But pale despair and cold tranquility, (/) Nature’s vast frame, the web of human things, (/) Birth and the grave, they are not as they were.” (Shelley: Alastor, or Spirit of Solitude). Maybe, Percey, but then again, are these things not as they were, or is only my relationship to them changed? Or is the change within myself alone?
Monday now, and time to take stock. I’ll have some good transit tales for you later this week. For now, I’m still masticating on a very meaty weekend indeed.
