And another thing . . .

Gratitudes:

Birthdays!

Turning 47, even though Dad tried to tell me I turned 46.

The kindness of friends and family.

Random and Not-So-Random Acts of Kindness

See right. These were all RAKs bestowed upon me today. It was a good day - with promises of a really good night to come!

Other Art Gallery

Tuesday, March 11, 2003

You wanna see the crap I have to put up with on my birthday? I was joking today that baking 50 batches of brownies a year finally pays off on my birthday! Celebrating birthdays at WNYCS has become a fine tradition. Even ex-employees mention how much they miss celebrating their birthday at work.

Sally gave me these balloons, a gerbera daisy plant and birthday breakfast bagels! (Those are napkin "flowers" stuck behind that wall pocket. Don't ask.)

Here are the cards and gifts I received. Jen very kindly baked me birthday brownies! They were so damn good I told her I was feeling threatened, but she said she wasn't interested in taking on baking for so many people at work. Whew, my Birthday Brownie position is still secure. Barb made a plate of cookies. I did share all the food with my co-workers, of course. I did manage to snag the brownie container just in time so Steve and I can have brownie sundaes for dessert tomorrow night. And I brought home the last of Barb's cookies too, for which Steve was grateful. She even had Dove chocolate eggs on the cookie plate. Apparently my fondness for Dove chocolate is well known. See? It pays to have a big mouth!

My cubicle looked like a funeral parlor. Sally gave me the gerbera daisy to the right of the monitor. Nancy gave me the flowers to the left of the monitor, in a beautiful hand painted vase. I'll have to take a picture of that separately - it's really gorgeous. Kathy gave me the bouquet of flowers on top of the shelf unit and Mom sent the flowers on the desk. Good thing I don't have allergies or I'd be sneezing up a storm!

The owner of the company, Ray, takes each employee out for lunch for their birthday. In fact the March birthdays at work are March 9, 10, 11 - isn't that funny, just those 3 all in a row like that? So we went today, celebrating the March 10 birthday and mine. He said I could invite someone so I invited Kathy, and my manager went too. Someone had told me Ray's daughter and son-in-law were going to the concert tonight so I mentioned that I was going. It was quite a topic of conversation for the rest of the day as people found out. I hadn't said anything until today when people asked me how I was celebrating my birthday. My standard reply was, "Steve and I are getting together with 12,000 of my closest friends and Bruce Springsteen said he'd drop by and play for a few hours." I knew I was very excited, obviously, but I didn't think it would mean much to anyone else. But some people had stories of when they saw him or they had other concert stories to share. By the time I left for the day, people I didn't think knew about my plans were wishing me a good time at the concert tonight. Guess I'll owe them a review too!

My department had birthday pie and ice cream for me in the afternoon, but we all had a tough time eating it just because we were so full of bagels and cookies and brownies. Plus we'd had a 2 day bake sale as well, so everyone was pretty sugared out. I even said, outloud, "I'm so chocolated out," and people were aghast. It was a big food day and I know I won't eat dinner tonight before the concert. Urp!

Thank you everyone for the cards and emails. I guess I've mentioned Bruce enough because every (non-work) birthday card mentioned Bruce in some way! In fact, Gretchen sent me 3 e-cards with Bruce's picture. These are for my girlfriends - check out this young stuff!!