happy

My friend John Chew took the above photo on June 1st, 1982. From left then clockwise: Reid, Sue Wong (with whom I shared my first apartment), me, Luisa. For more ancient photos, please check the archive that John kindly set up in honour of my birthday. Clicking on any of the smaller photos will take you to a much larger photo. Some are truly embarrassing :-) but all of them (like the one above, my favourite) reminded me of some of the wonderful friendships I had back in my university days and still have today. I'll be using these photos as Blatherpics over the next while. Thank you, John!

Got birthday phone calls from family members as well as my friends Andrew, Andrea, Luisa & Reid & Ronnie & Michael, and Scott (who gave a charming belch at the end of his rendition of Happy Birthday :-)).





Jeff and I went to Saved By Technology yesterday and bought a whole bunch of home recording studio stuff including a copy of eMagic's Logic Gold, a DBX Mini Pre-amp, a Firewire hard drive, a MIDI interface, a USB Audiosport Duo external audio interface, and some small speakers. We've also ordered a Studio Projects C1 microphone.

Jeff hooked everything up when we got home: installed the software, hooked up the hardware, tested things out with my Roland JV-80 (a keyboard I've had for years but haven't used much until now). I pretended to help by reading the giant manual for Logic, but then took a nap (!) for two hours while he worked. I am so bad.

It all looks VERYVERY cool, but it will take me some time to learn how to use everything properly. I can't wait! I'm holding off delving into this too much until after FKO (Andrea Dale's visiting me for a few days before, Dave Clement's visiting me for a few days after) and the short story is finished (the deadline's been extended, so Michelle and I have until the 15th).





In the evening, Scott and Jeff and I went to Ruth's Chris for dinner. Our waitperson at Ruth's Chris presented me with a slice of chocolate cheesecake and a candle after the meal, and also took our photo with a digital camera. They gave us a card with the photo before we left (see last Blatherpic).

Scott gave me a DVD for my birthday, Haiku Tunnel, which we watched after we got back from dinner. Pretty entertaining movie. :-) Scott's only had his guitar for three weeks, by the way, and he's already confident with a whole bunch of chords and some fingerpicking! We jammed a bit on guitar and harp, which was fun.

And today's the last day of my birthday weekend, with a party at Fune this afternoon; Jeff booked the entire place. He's tried to keep some of the preparations secret, but had to let me know some of them in order to keep me from snooping around the apartment too much. After I went to bed last night, for example, he baked my birthday cake. I've never seen Jeff bake ANYTHING before, let alone a cake for a lot of people, so I'm pretty tickled that he'd do this for me (call me weird, but I find this much more romantic than the "flowers and candlelit dinner" sort of thing :-)). This morning I woke up to find something pretty big and covered in foil and a tea towel in the kitchen. I'm going to be good and resist peeking.

Looking forward to the party this afternoon!

As for the Virtual Birthday Party, thanks so much for coming, everyone! People who attended included: David, Kay Shapero, Steve Macdonald, Alida, Brian, Paul Stockton, Bruce Adelsohn, Harold Groot, Amanda Foubister, Chris Conway, Rob Wynne, Jallan, Jim Poltrone, Friendly Gatecrashing Stranger, Ruth, Gary Ehrlich, Luisa, Joey Shoji, Dave Alway, Pontus Hedman (wow, haven't seen Pontus in over 20 years!!!), Julie, Bodo Hardbottle, Mary Ellen, Dave Weingart, Sherman Dorn, Martijn, Randy Hoffman, Ginny, David Brake, Janet, Katy, Helen, Andrea, JeffR, Reid, John O'Halloran, Heather Borean, Amanda Snyder, Andy Beaton, Simon Fairbourn, Kennerly, Susanna, Dave Henry, Gary McGath, Unregistered User, Lyanne Quirt, Bill Sutton, Kimberly Stinson, Rand, Jeff Bohnhoff, Jeff Kesner, Scott Snyder, Lissa Allcock, Parki, Tom Jeffers, Shane Stacks, Amanda Weinstein, Allison, Frank, Brenda Sutton, Doug, Rick Hewett, Mary Crowell, and Jodi. Apologies if I've missed any names; I tried to get them all.

It will take me weeks to clean the virtual chocolate off my virtual rug, but it was well worth it.

:-)

If you're curious, here's what I did for my birthday last year.





My friend Seanan wrote a birthday sonnet for me. She gave permission for me to reprint it, so I'll end today's Blather with her poem:

Birthday Sonnet
By Seanan McGuire

A thousand miles away and more she stands,
The distant daughter of a foreign shore,
And in her voice is peace, and in her hands
A thousand dreams bring forth a thousand more.
I'd sing to her of angels, but my voice
Has not the strength to span the miles between:
Yet sometimes still I hear her, and rejoice,
For all the days to come, and not yet seen.
So here's the question: where does friendship thrive?
Is it in closeness, walking hand in hand?
Does distance mean affection won't survive?
I hear her call...and then I understand.

I know what friendship is and where it's found:
And in the end, she always comes around.

---

Today's Blatherpics:

	John Chew took this photo on June 1st, 1982. From left then clockwise: Reid, Sue Wong, me, Luisa.
	I took this in St. Andrew's subway station. Jeff looks rather hunky in this photo, I think. :-)
	Jeff paying for our purchases at Saved By Technology.
	Manual for Logic. Jeff Bohnhoff's name is in the credits!
	Scott, me and Jeff at Ruth's Chris.