Great Big Sea Kicks Off My Birthday

My favorite Canadian band rolled into Seattle for my birthday eve.  I've had tickets forever.  You know, they were well worth the wait!  I just love Great Big Sea.  Love, love, love 'em.

GBS is celebrating their twentieth anniversary with a tour and Seattle was the second stop.  It was a grand night with lots of my favorites played, including Charlie Horse, which I didn't expect.

Alan Doyle

Sean McCann

Bob Hallett

Oh those dear lads sang their hearts out.  They told funny stories.  They had the house up on their feet, singing, dancing and begging for more.  And all, she said modestly, to start off my birthday celebration!
"Oh," you say, "really?  Just for you?  They came to town to entertain just for you???"

Well, yes.  I do believe that they did.  I mean, honestly, I can't think of anything better to start my birthday season than a GBS concert.  (Okay, I can think of one other person who could adequately entertain for my birthday, but that's another post....initials BS!)  So, YES, they came just to give the start of my natal day anniversary a big send off.  And they did, they really did.

It was a great show.  And a great birthday.

Thanks, lads.

Birthday "Season" and the Missing Q

A few years ago I was having a belated birthday coffee with one of my sisters-in-law. I was explaining how I was sorry I was so very tardy in getting together with her to give her a birthday gift and to treat her to coffee (or lunch or whatever it was we were doing). She said, basically, "oh bosh, I like nothing more than a birthday 'season.'" She explained that if one did some careful planning and scheduling, you could turn a birthday into a birthday season, thus extending the fun and celebrations for a much longer period than one 24 day. It struck me as a brilliant idea and from that moment on I have been a huge proponent of birthday seasons.

This birthday season started out really well. My DH asked me last week if I wanted the new MacBook Pro I'd been drooling over and when I said "YES!" he told me to go order it. So I did. In fact, I am typing away right now on the new computer.

It has a Q! That might seem like a really silly thing to say, but my old laptop has been missing the Q key for over a year. You get really, really creative when you are missing a key. I could get a Q by writing a sentence in either email or in a word document and cut it out then paste it wherever it was that I needed it to go. I could avoid words with Q. I pulled my hair out (a lot) but I got by. But now I have a Q! And I find I want to say things like, "My, isn't it quite the queerest quandary Queenie has found herself quaking in?"and other such bosh. It is lovely to have a Q right there, waiting for you, yearning to be used.

It's always the little things, don't you think, that can make us so very happy.

Besides the lovely, lovely new computer, DH bought me two vertebrae that he found while walking in the dessert in Eastern Washington. Just lying there, on the ground.....and he brought them home to me. I love bones and nests and bits of this and that. The two vertebrae would have been just the nicest gift all on their own, but add them to a computer and you can see I am having a grand birthday season (and it's not yet even my birthday)! I am a lucky, lucky lady to be so well treated.

Yes. I am.

New Travel Journal

I am going on a dream trip in late April to Tunisia and Morocco so lately I've been working on putting together the journal in which to record my experiences. Sometimes I honestly think that the best part of a trip is coming home and having my travel journal to remind me of all my experiences.
I've done my interpretation of a minaret for the front and back cover, one in the day and the other at night. I used paper for the minaret and the moon/sun, acrylic paint and gel medium for the rest of the covers. I like the texture I achieved with a small roller with the gel medium. I am a messy journal-keeper and am likely to put my journal down in a puddle of something at a restaurant or coffee shop, so water-proofing the covers is a real requirement.

I love this quote from Proust and decided it would be a good reminder while I was traveling, so I put it opposite the first page of the journal.

I like the effect I achieved on the inside of the covers using walnut ink, glimmer mists and kosher salt. I will definitely use that technique again.

The other big news is that I turned 60 earlier in the week. My family gathered last weekend to celebrate the beginning of my 7th decade (!!!) and that was the very best gift I received. I must say that never have I had so many birthday wishes, phone calls (from as far away as Norway and Nepal), flowers and gifts. I feel so very loved with this out pouring of well wishes and love, and rather humbled by it all. I've been taken to dinner, to lunch, to coffee and I've been emailed and hugged, spoiled and cosseted and it's been going on now for over a week. I guess I can honestly claim to be having a birthday season rather than just a birth day! I like it---it's fun! And there will be more celebrating when my dear friend Bee arrives as we celebrate our mutual birthdays together. The birthday season continues.

There are so many flowers in the house from all these lovely friends that it looks like there has been a death---and then I realized that there has been.....my "youth!"

Welcome Abigail & Olivia!

Our family was blessed with the safe delivery of twin daughters to my son and daughter-in-law today. Abigail and Olivia were in a hurry and decided that since Mommy and Daddy had taken themselves, and big sister Emma, off to Eastern Washington to Grandpa Johnny's (Emma's name for Grandpa Connie!) cabin for the 4th of July weekend and that it would be very inconvenient for everyone if they made their entrance on the "wrong" side of the mountains, that it seemed like the perfect idea! The were delivered in mid-afternoon via C-Section. Mama is doing well, although she is understandably exhausted. Daddy is exhausted, too. As are the grandparents on both sides, the Granties, the Aunties and everyone remotely connected to this six week early arrival!

I was at my cabin so before I could head over the mountains to Yakima (the locale for the debut of the Twins), I had to get back to Edmonds and drop off Granty Nonie (who would have come, too, had she not been slated for jury duty this very week!), grab a few things (like my blood pressure pills!) and then head east. I didn't arrive until about six PM this evening, but got to see both the girls and let them know that now that Gramma Unger has arrived, all is well and they can relax, work on getting big enough to make the trip to the West side of the Mountains and to get ready for the barrage of photos that will be taken of them---soon. Alas, I have no photos yet to share with you, Dear Reader. Let me assure you that they are adorable and look much like their elder sister. Nabby is sporting a black eye, thanks to Olivia, who apparently kicked her sister in the face....jockeying for position, no doubt. At any rate, they are perfect, they are adored already and they are a most highly anticipated and welcome addition to our family!

Baby Girl Twins!

Twice the sugar
and twice the spice
two baby girls
are twice as Nice!

Double the giggles
and double the grins
Doubles the joy of
Baby Girl Twins!
Copyright 2005

Christine Michaels

Welcome, little ones. I love you.

Birthday

Yesterday was my birthday, and a fine one it was, too! All three of my adorable children phoned. I only got to speak to Don & Kellie, as the girls called my cell phone and we really don't have much cell service here. (I did, finally, get enough coverage to get their voice mail messages.) We had a lovely dinner of BBQ chicken, roasted squash with goat cheese, salad and lots of Pisco sours, with birthday cake and ice cream for desert.

I spent a happy afternoon on the beach, collecting coquina shells. Unfortunately once you have collected a gazillion of the little things, you have to deal with them. We could have made a "delicious broth" out of them, as mentioned in an earlier posting, but what we really wanted was a lot of the shells. They really do look like butterflies, as the two halves of the shell stay attached to each other. We brought home something like 9 cupfuls of them and boiled them up. Now we are reduced to pulling the meat out of the teeny tiny things and then we'll reboil them to have clean, non-smelly shells for crafting or whatever we end up using them for. Since we have both collected and cleaned the little guys, we will share them out as equally as possible. (Most of them are white but there are some really pretty colors of the coquinas, too.) Did I mention that cleaning them out is a mind-numbing boring job? Well, it is.

Happy 60th Birthday, Nonie!

December 7th.....a day that will live in, ah, the family records as Nonie's birth date. And some other thing....what was it? Oh, yes, Pearl Harbor. Well, Nonie's birthday is a much nicer memory, so we'll concentrate on that.

Nonie had a nice day, I hope. Her mother had a luncheon at Scott's for her and there were eight of us there to celebrate the birthday "girl." Even Emma was there, and she was the life of the party. Gwen hurried from the airport to make lunch, as she had just returned from a business trip. We all had a fine time. This evening I took Nonie out for her birthday dinner. She had picked Giraldi's here in Edmonds. We had a pretty good meal (the risotto was way too salty, but everything else was delicious) and several glasses of wine and champagne were consumed. I had a very good time!

I am wishing Nonie a most happy 6oth year, full of fun, new experiences and good friends.

Thanksgiving

We had our Thanksgiving early this year. My daughter Jen came up from San Francisco for a weekend visit on November 15th. We celebrated my husband's birthday (he is now officially a whole year older than I---which will last until March and I plan to enjoy those few months of being the younger wife!), Jen's visit and an early Thanksgiving last Saturday. It was a fine day.

I did the traditional turkey with all the trimmings and my mother-in-law Eunice, sister-in-law Nonie, movie date night buddy Rune and Don and family all came to help us celebrate and eat. I think my very favorite moment was when everyone had a plate full and all conversation ceased and they all began to eat. For a cook, that total silence while the guest first start tasting your food is the highest of praise. I must say, the turkey was stunning! Brown, crisp, juicy and full of yummy stuffing. It was a fine meal and the company was divine.

Emma provided the comic relief. She had butter and a chocolate turkey for dinner. She claimed to be eating a roll, but mostly she was just shredding it into ever smaller crumbs while announcing to the table, "I need more butter." So, the doting gramma would put a bit more butter on her plate and Emma would deposit it on her knife (while holding onto a crumb of roll), then put the knife in her mouth, slurp off the butter and then announce to the table, "I need more butter." This was repeated often. She was also quite concerned with who was still eating as she had been firmly informed that no chocolate turkeys would be consumed by anyone until every single one of us was completely done eating....

Finally, the chocolate turkey consuming portion of the meal arrived and Emma was allowed to "open" her turkey. It was good, as you can see from the above photo, but she was a much neater eater this year, disappointing her family tremendously. Last year she was chocolate from forehead to toes. Ah, well, I guess we should count this as wonderful progress in civilizing the child, but I rather miss the messy little face with the huge blue eyes filled with the joy that only a mouthful of chocolate can elicit. They grow up so fast!