My birthday

Well, this has been a nice birthday so far. {Smile}

It's been particularly food-oriented. My parents and I had Portuguese sweet bread buns for breakfast. (Yes, they really are bread and really are sweet, unlike some other "sweet bread." {wink})

Then I had a long and leisurely lunch at a nice restaurant with a couple of friends. Talk about a surprise! I've read about birthday lunches with the girls, but I'm not sure I've ever been to one before. Certainly not as the birthday girl. It was such a nice treat! One gave me lotion in a shopping bag with a very cute kitty on it, and the other gave me a card as well as lunch. I had coconut limeade and a mushroom burger, while my friends had wine and I forget which main courses they ordered. We shared cucumber sushi, Italian herb bread, and passion fruit ice cream. (Um, have I mentioned recently that Hawai'i can be quite cheerfully blatant about multiculturalism?) And we talked a talked... we left the restaurant two hours after we got there. {chuckle, HAPPY SMILE}

For dinner, my parents and I had pork with apples for the main course, with buns, sparkling cider, and chocolate cake for dessert. I chose them, and was very happy with the results. My presents are mostly still in the mail, but Dad did give me a book I'd noticed about Nainoa Thompson, who may have helped start the modern Hawaiian Renaissance when he brought back Polynesian navigation and canoe-building techniques as re-creational Archeology. That should be interesting reading. {SMILE}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

{chuckle}

Mulluane asked an interesting question on her Old Bat's Belfry blog ( http://oldbatsbelfry.blogspot.com/ ) yesterday. (Over here: http://oldbatsbelfry.blogspot.com/2014/01/fun-fridays-let-your-imaginations-fly.html ) She asked what job we'd like to have in heaven.

I said librarian, and apologized for not being more creative and original.

She asked me to save it, and come up with another answer. My first answer was the right one for me. I just explained why in a follow-up comment:

"{blink} I don't think it would be much of a heaven if you didn't have stories to keep you entertained, or if you couldn't finally learn the answers to the burning questions you always wondered about.

If you have enough stories to keep everyone entertained with all their different tastes, and enough information to answer everyone's burning questions, including the highly technical ones of specialists within their fields... well, you'll have to store that information somewhere. Libraries started with wooden boards, clay tablets, and papyrus scrolls. They moved to parchment and vellum, then started cutting the vellum and binding it into books. Then they started getting audio visual materials and computer files. Every last type has been collected, organized, and preserved by libraries. Even if they stored al this in the minds of assorted residents, they'd need a very detailed catalog to tell you which resident to consult about what.

But I bet they don't, because who wants to have to drop whatever they're busy doing to answer a question every time someone thinks of it? So they'll have some way to store both stories and information that saves everyone from interruptions. Then it won't matter whether they store it books, or clouds, or stars, or atoms; they'll still have to store those materials, and organize them, and help folks find the specific information and stories they want when they want it.

The folks who do that will be librarians by definition... and I'd give anything to be one of them. {SMILE}"

I'm not sure what either she or David, the other fellow in the discussion so far, will think of that, but it really is the truth. {SMILE, wink}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

{sigh, wipe eyes}

When am I going to stop tearing up when "Amigos Para Sempre" by Andrew Lloyd Webber plays? It describes so well the kind of close friendship that lasts a lifetime. {pause}

That's the kind of friend I lost last summer, when cancer took her far too soon. {wistful look}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

Holidays {Smile}

I probably should have said this sooner, but both Christmas and New Year's went well if quietly. The Christmas Tree never got as many ornaments as meant to add, and the mochi never got baked. I really need to find traditions that are closer to my own talents. Then again, you may have noticed that this year's story hasn't been sent yet, either... You'll get something when I get something done. Currently it's stalled. {rueful Smile}

However, the tree did have some ornaments. Dad fixed a nice dinner on Christmas Eve from steak, potatoes, and cake an aunt sent. (She's noticed that Dad complains that he can't find reliably tender steak in Hilo. In fact, we gave up on non-ground local beef after one batch was so tough, all three of us complained about how much exercise chewing was... {wryly amused smile}) Then there was a nice breakfast followed by present opening the next morning, followed by present reading for Mom and Me, since we both got a lot of books. {Smile, wink}

New Year's was surprisingly quiet this year. There weren't nearly as many fireworks as previously, not even the "novelty fireworks" you don't need a permit for. (You need a permit for every 5000 firecrackers in this county. They aren’t expensive compared to the fireworks budgets of the people who want them, but they're a nuisance to get. I guess that's one way of making people cut back. {lop-sided smile})

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin