KOMOnews.comLook at that weather forecast: some sun every day, even into October. If it turns out to be true, this will be the first year I can remember--perhaps the first day ever--that Seattle has had sun on my birthday. I tell you, I'm excited.
Kelley and I have just reached the halfway mark of the ten-day jubilee that is our 50th birthday celebration.
We've been gifted with, among other things:
- a sabre
- artwork
- bottles of Krug
- music
- gift certificates
- truffles
- books
- a little clay golem from Prague
- a feather from a parrot called Algernon
- nifty little USB drives smaller than keys
And that's just the stuff I'm willing to talk about...
I love gifts. I have a dragonish heart: love to accumulate and gloat and croon over my swag. So we're beaming in the midst of a gush, a torrent, a bouquet of fabulous items and events. We've been fêted, hosted, whisked to restaurants for wonderful food, wine, and conversation with friends and family. People are going all out. Not just inviting us round for delicious meals, but hand-making the pasta, using their own geranium leaves in the flourless chocolate cake, sending a limousine (a big one, not just a towncar) to pick us up. We've had duck and chicken and caviar, halibut and duck liver mousse and lobster smoked over cedar chips. (Well, K had the lobster; I can't eat crustaceans.) And the wine... Well, let me say that the last week or so is about as good as the week we spent on the QE2 ten years ago for our fortieth jubilee, when we drank vintage Krug and Margaux and felt like James Bond as we drank Louis XIII (Cognac) and played craps. (I won. A lot. Had to scoop all the chips into my dress--yep, you heard that correctly--because there were too many to carry.) This year, for example, we had a 1990 Pauillac that turned out to be the last of its kind from a Famous Local cellar. We've drunk that particular wine several times over the years, and now we've reached the end of an era. And it feels right.
It feels time to discover new wine, new friends, new vistas to add to our current ones. We're probably about halfway through our lives (yep, we're as ambitious in this respect as in others) and I can hardly wait to see what the next half-century holds. Sun, for one thing. Life is good.
