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May Birthdays
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Oh my gosh, Sherry, I missed your birthday while I was in my paperwork onslaught at work! I'm glad to hear that it was a happy one. Your friendship and capable coordination of Constant Reader are great gifts to me. And, Tom and I went to Limone's because of your recommendation when we came through Asheville last year. What an incredibly good restaurant it is!
And, belated happy birthday to Erin and Wanda! Both of you are great additions to our group here. I'm glad you found us.
Barb, thanks so much. I'm glad you liked Limone's; I thought you would. When do you think you might be back this way again?
It may not be for another year, at least. Our son still lives in Chapel Hill, but we're going to fly him up here this summer as a birthday gift. I loved Chapel Hill and Asheville when we were there though.
I'll add my felicitations to all those expressed here already and add a note about the most special May birthday of all. My granddaughter Miranda (my older son's daughter) turned three on May 31. Here's a picture of her from a few months ago, when my son's family vacationed in Costa Rica:
Today my wife, Kathy, and I connected with Miranda via my new video phone setup. It was the best video phone connection I've ever seen: reasonably sharp full-screen picture and pretty good sound--vastly better than the thumbnail-sized video-phone pictures I'm used to. It was a real thrill being able to see Miranda and her brother and watch their excitement about the video phone. The highlight of our call was watching Miranda open the presents we sent her. She even put on the tutu that Kathy had gotten for her and demonstrated some dancing moves (including a few tumbles). Great stuff.
If any of you are like us--with children or children on the other side of the country, I strongly recommend you look into hooking up video phones on your computers. The hardware isn't terribly expensive, and the great thing is that the calls themselves are free! We've come a long way from the days when my dad got out his stopwatch to make sure that we never exceeded three minutes on long-distance calls.
... who ain't really feeling all that grouchy today and from whom you may hear again when his Manhattan granddaughter turns three at the end of June
She is adorable, Kent. I am one of the lucky ones. My grand-daughter lives 10 minutes away, and I get to see her just about every day.
My grandson is only 10 minutes away, also. We just finished a wild day of gardening, reading (sports stories, poetry, and King Midas), sharing fruit, playing knights (I'm Lady Grayhair), and Couch Football with a team of stuffed animals. What on earth could be better than grandchildren? (His birthday is June 3 - he'll turn 7!)
The answer, Wilhelmina, is that nothing is better than grandchildren. Our children were--and are--wonderful, but I mean it when I tell everyone that our grandchildren are uniformly cuter, brighter, sweeter, and more talented than our children ever were. And, best of all, we can send them home when we get tired of them. We have two grandchildren (soon to be 9 and 13) who live about 20 miles away and three (soon to number four) who live on the other side of the country. The only time we had all five of them in one place was two years ago, when my younger son got married.A few hours ago, I got an email message from that younger son announcing that he had arrived safely in "S.A." Huh? I didn't know he was going anywhere. Turns out that S.A. is Saudi Arabia. See what I mean about one's own children being disappointing? Shouldn't a dutiful son keep his parents informed about what country--or at least what continent--he's in?
However, I suppose I can forgive him. He's in the Secret Service and must be in S.A. preparing for President Obama's visit there.
Wilhelmina, I just read your GR profile and see that you're interested in African American fiction. By any chance, have you ever read George Schuyler's Black Empire? It's a novel written as a newspaper serial during the 1930's that I edited for book publication in 1991.
