A Lovely Birthday: Thank You, Leah and Everybody Else

Birthday revelers looking more serious than we were on Leah's deck.

I'm outside the nail shop, readying my adventure.

So the birthday celebration is winding down and it's been a doozy, thanks to Leah and her stealth party this evening on top of a first for me and more birthday greetings than I could keep up with. By 8 this morning, my Facebook account was dang near full of greetings, which, I think, constitutes something of an Internet phenomenon.

What does one do with 100 FB greetings on his birthday, mostly from "friends" I don't know. One writes brief thank you notes. All day.

Deng works on my foot.

My first nice present this morning came from my pal Liv Kiser, who shot the jacket photo for my novel, CLOG!, which we hope will sell. Liv shot some good pix and you'll get to see at least one of them when the book gets here (it has to sell first, but that's coming).

Deng works me over.

I ran over to Lynchburg this evening for a birthday dinner with Leah and my first pedicure. OK, 67 years is too long to go without a pedicure. I won't make that mistake again. A lovely Vietnamese woman named Dang did the honors and it was ... well ... pretty damn good. I wanted to take Dang home with me.

When we got back to Leah's, the front porch swing was swinging, a coffee cup was on the porch rail and we were both mystified about what was going on.

Leah knew and broke up laughing when we entered the house to "Surprise!" I was felled and touched. Cool birthday.

Thanks, all of you for making it so.