Nonie's Birthday "Season"

When Nonie's birthday arrived last week I was still in California hanging out with my little Bumbus, so I owed Nonie a birthday dinner.  In our family we like to celebrate a birthday for more than just one day and we call this having a birthday season.  If you are interested in this concept you can read about it here.  Anyway, I owed her a dinner and Sunday we got together to share some seafood, a libation (or two) and a good catching up session.

I had picked Anthony's Home Port restaurant, here in my little town, and they did not disappoint.  Besides good vino and excellent seafood, the view out the windows was wonderful.  It turns out that many of the boats from the local yacht club are all decked out in Christmas splendor.  From our table we had a fine view.

I should have remembered that this unusual Christmas display happens each year, but I didn't.  I am always surprised to see boats all decked out with Christmas lights run up the masts and inflatable Santas and snowmen manning the decks.

It really is a festive and cheerful display and adds a happy seasonal note to the marina at the darkest time of the year.  We braved the cold and took a stroll down to the edge of the pier after dinner to get a better look.

The Birthday Season Continues

My dear friend, known here to one and all as Auntie Pumpkin, took me to lunch today for my Birthday Season. She asked me to come to her house at a certain time and that we'd then go to the surprise restaurant for lunch. "No jeans," she said. So I bit the bullet and tried to dress up, a little. No jeans. Combed hair. Teeth brushed. Good thing, too, because she took me to the Bellevue Wild Ginger restaurant for a festive, celebratory lunch. Wild Ginger is one of my all-time favorite places. And today, as always, it did not fail to satisfy my every wish for a lovely time---food, service, ambiance. Auntie Pumpkin provided the grand good company.

Here we have Auntie Pumpkin and her luncheon entree, Duck with Steamed Buns.

And here is my luncheon entree----Laksa!

I first tried laksa when I was in Singapore and I took a cooking class at Raffles Hotel (for another birthday season, if memory serves....maybe 11 years ago?) and I've been a big, BIG fan of this wonderful seafood-spice-noodle-curry-amalgam ever since. If you have never tried laksa, you should seriously consider making a batch and see for yourself what a delight it is (and it really is worth hunting down the exotic ingredients).

Since turmeric is one of the ingredients of the spice mix, the bib was necessary to keep my "not jeans" wardrobe looking pristine. (Notice the practiced noodle slurping technique....)

I am always surprised when I venture into Bellevue that it has grown into a city with many high rise buildings. This one had a lovely reflection that caught my eye.

After lunch Auntie Pumpkin took me shopping at Rosa Mundi, a little shop that used to have a branch in my town (but sadly no more), where I found this treasure. And what, you ask, am I going to do with that???

Tie it to my Christmas wreath with a bright red ribbon next December, of course! It will be just the perfect thing!

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.