Birthday

Today is my birthday. But since it is a fast day, the party was yesterday. It was much fun. We invited the whole parish and all of my family. Of those, about 30 responded. I was kind of disappointed that so many people didn't contact me to let me know if they were comming or not. Then at the party I discovered that some of the people who had been invited never received their invitations. I think what must have happened is that I used post cards as invitations and those are thrid class mail, as opposed to first class mail. I don't know. But now I feel bad because some people didn't get invitations. I especially feel bad because it was such a fun party and many of my friends didn't know they were invited!!!

There were about 15 people who showed up. We sang songs, we told jokes, we played games. We drank champagne cocktails, many bottles of syrah, and orange and raspberry Italian sodas. Because so many people did not RSVP we had prepared enough food and drink for three times the number of people who actually came. So there were a lot of left overs. I've never had so many bottles San Pellegrino in my house at one time. It's like a sparkling water convention.

People brought me presents. I was kind of surprized by that. I never think of presents when I think of my birthday. So it was really nice. I was given three beautiful books, a bottle of scotch, ginger cookies, a miniature sailboat, Joseph Schmidt truffles, and several bottles of wine.

Oh, there was one especially fun thing. My wife put together a charades game with the names of all of my favorite books and movies. Everyone who guessed corectly won a cigar from my humidor. It was hillarious. Matt left with three. A 14 year old youth left with 5. Neither of them smoke!!! Luckily, the 14 YO has a mother who knows people who smoke cigars, and Matt is going skiing with cigar smokers this weekend. So it all works out. But I must say, watching people acting out the names to my favorite books and movies was hillarious.

I've had a good birthday.