Thanksgiving Day is a jewel, to set in the hearts of honest men;
but be careful that you do not take the day, and leave out the gratitude.
~E.P. Powell
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Birthday magic
We are all born naked and screaming
and if you’re lucky that sort of thing won’t stop there.
~ Unknown
I feel as if the the hamster running in the wheel of time has been given speed or something…time is flying by unnaturally quick! I cannot believe November is almost over, tomorrow brings Thanksgiving, and today I turn another year older.
Before I go any further, I must explain the cake, pictured above. Jamie, Nancy and Pat, dear friends and co-workers, pitched in to get me this marvelous cake. Jamie did the planning, knowing just what I love. Neverwhere having significance because that was the book with which I introduced her to Neil Gaiman. The cake was made by Samantha Combs, an extremely talented confectionary artist whose work can be seen, and ordered, here. It was such an amazing cake and I am sooooo thrilled with it. It was almost a travesty to cut it and dig in…but the cake was darn yummy, so that took away some of the pain of marring the design. Thank you, thank you, thank you Jamie, Nancy and Pat. I am still smiling today about this one. A cake with my favorite live author, favorite deceased author, and favorite artist represented? What could be better?!?!? 🙂
39! Wow! One last year of being ‘thirtysomething’. It should be a very interesting year. I feel like I’ve learned some interesting life lessons over the past couple of months which I intend to post this weekend over on Poppet Planet. I certainly don’t wish this coming year away by any means, and yet I look forward to marrying some of my current revelations about myself to the ‘old me’ to see what emerges. Fear not, though I appear to be starting to grow up at age 39, I am certainly not outgrowing my youthful loves and passions. They’ve just been overwhelmed by work lately.
Those whom the gods love grow young.
~ Oscar Wilde
I took this past Monday off to celebrate my birthday, giving me a long weekend to celebrate my birthday. My wife and daughter indulged what is becoming a yearly tradition to watch the LOTR extended films over my birthday. We watched one film each night, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Last night I pulled out Return of the King, the novel, and read passages to them as neither has read the books. I read the Houses of Healing Chapter and the further chapter when Aragorn returns to Minas Tirith triumphant to become king and Faramir and Eowyn hook up! 😉 I read to them the last chapter, The Grey Havens. I then read passages out of the appendices so that they would know what happened to all the main characters. Finally I pulled out The Silmarillion and read to them the section on the creation of the dwarves. Needless to say it was quite fun and more than once I had to stop myself from getting choked up. It is such an emotional story, especially once you’ve made strong connections with the characters through the books and/or films.
Today it is a short work day complete with an adjustment from 70 degree weather to 30 degree weather, with rain and snow in the forecast. Winter has come!
I look forward to the long weekend and hope you all have a long weekend coming your way as well. For us it will be stuffing ourselves with Thanksgiving delights followed by putting up the Christmas tree and finishing up the outside decorations. And if all goes well, Grave Times just might make its way to your doorstep…er, computer screen…you patient R.I.P.ers!
Have a warm and wonderful weekend with those you love, and don’t forget that much love is coming your way from the Rat here in Kansas City.
And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.
~ Abraham Lincoln
How to….
…Alienate Your Friends, Loved Ones, and Even Your Pet…In 4 Easy Steps:
1. Have your place of employment schedule an accrediation site for the first part of November without consulting you to see if it might interfere with your reading challenges and the start of your birthday month.
2. Two weeks prior to said site visit, discover that the work that your former boss did the previous two site visits has somehow disappeared from the face of the earth.
3. Panic.
4. Set to work determined to get up to speed and be ready for the surveyors prior to their arrival. This step involves:
a. Working LONG hours.
b. Taking work home.
c. Staying away from things that you’d rather do, like be online.
d. Spend most of last Monday through Friday in office, including staying one night until 2 a.m. the following morning, going home for 3 hours sleep, and then heading back to work.
If you do these simple things, the results are quite interesting:
All Hallow’s Eve
(Image by Alex Raymond)
IT’S HALLOWEEN
It’s Halloween! It’s Halloween!
The moon is full and bright
And we shall see what can’t be seen
On any other night.
Skeletons and ghosts and ghouls,
Grinning goblins fighting duels,
Werewolves rising from their tombs,
Witches on their magic brooms.
In masks and gowns
we haunt the street
And knock on doors
for trick or treat.
Tonight we are
the king and queen,
For oh tonight
it’s Halloween!
~Jack Prelutsky
A Lisa Snellings-Clark Halloween…and More!
But first, a word from our Sponser:
It feels like every other post for the past couple of months has involved an apology for my sudden disappearance. This one is no different. For the past 2 weeks I have had the joy of experiencing intermittent internet connectivity (this is a registered illness, I believe). Multiple unsuccessful calls to my ISP later I was finally able to access a real human at 1:30 in the morning last weekend to schedule an appt for a service call. They arrived on Thursday, the nice man gave me a sleek new black modem and all was well. For about 4 hours. At that time my “intermittent” connectivity changed to absolutely no connectivity. Thus it was that I didn’t get back up and running until late Friday evening, and as you will see from the following events, this has been a busy weekend!
With All Hallow’s Eve fast approaching I was really able to get into the spirit of the holiday because Friday night was the annual Tart’s Halloween Party, hosted in part by yours truly.