Yes, it was a VERY Happy Birthday, thanks!

Thanks to all the kind people who have been showering me with good wishes, emails, chocolate, and presents--and if I can figure out how to post additional pictures here, I'll put up a photo of the...er...Very Special Object contributed to the festivities by the Ladies of Lallybroch. Who else do you know who has his/her own bobblehead, I'd like to know?

My husband got me three pairs of socks (I asked for them), a set of weights (I hadn't specifically asked for them, but certainly wanted them), and a very pretty watch. My elder daughter is sending me some hand-spun yarn (we both knit, and she's lately taken up spinning and dying her own wool), my younger daughter brought me flowers and a shadow-box and informs me that we are going together to the spa next week for hot-stone massages (Eeee!), and my son got me "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" to complete my Pirates collection. He also took the Little Bad Dogs back to Flagstaff with him this afternoon, so I got another present as well--less dog-pee in the living room!

Anyway, I had a lovely day, doing pretty much just what I wanted--which, oddly enough, turned out to be writing. [g] So I wrote, blithely ignoring the enormous stacks of books waiting to be boxed in my office (that's what gets remodeled next), the small-but-oppressive stack of Important Things on my desk (dog-license forms, things waiting for blurb or comment, and the case number/phone number I have to call in order to replace the defective CD drive that came with our new desktop--we got the computer six months ago, and discovered the CD drive to be defective three months ago (it took that long for the EB*'s at Best Buy to fix the defective _hard_ drive, and reinstall the defective Vista OS--which had to be ordered twice, because they sent it with French installation disks the first time--so that we could get to the point where we could _tell_ the CD drive was defective). What with book-tours and holidays, I sort of haven't had the necessary three or four hours to spend on the phone with the EB*'s in order to get the d*mn thing replaced; it took six phone-hours to make them replace the hard drive, telling my story to _five_ different people in turn, all of whom put me on hold for anything from 20-45 minutes, all of whom agreed in turn that yes, they _did_ need to replace the drive...and then transferred me to someone else--ending up with a pothead in Canada who kept nodding off during the conversation, and ended up giving me an appointment time for a technician--but then putting in a different time, a week later, for the actual appointment, causing me to wait at home for three hours, and spend another two hours on the phone to find out where the &@^@&* the technician was. The technician's a nice young man, though--we've seen him four times so far; I should set him his own place at the dinner table), and sixteen phone calls from people wanting to rent an apartment. Had a great time! (And for those who are interested, part of what I wrote is posted as an excerpt on the Compuserve Books and Writers Forum, at

http://community.compuserve.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?tsn=21&nav=messages&webtag=ws-books&tid=58511

(message 35 has the excerpt attached to it)

And thanks to my husband--and the nice people at Avanti ("Restaurant of Distinction" [g]) for a delightful birthday dinner, featuring hot, fresh, buttery garlic bread, cold Rombauer chardonnay, a Benito salad (an enormous plate of mixed greens with giant shrimp, hearts of artichokes and palms, tomatoes, and garlic-basil vinaigrette), and Tortellinig Portofino--meat-filled tortellini in Alfredo sauce with mushrooms and walnuts. Followed--as though this were not enough--by chocolate lava cake with vanilla ice cream (and a little Williams-Sonoma Peppermint Bark for a midnight snack, courtesy of my sister [g])

It's been a great birthday--thanks!

* EB = Evil B@st@rds (see if I _ever_ buy another (haha) "Service Plan" from these people, that's all I can say)