Stephen threw a surprise birthday party for me, the sneaky weasel. Y’all have heard me moan previously about how it feels weird to have my birthday in the cold rainy autumn instead of bright sunny spring. I’ve made occasional noises about maybe celebrating it in Novemeber instead, but really, I just haven’t gotten up the motivation to organize anything for a few years now.

So Stephen organized on my behalf.

And I didn’t guess, either. In fact, I didn’t even guess when the first people started showing up (”Oh,” I thought to myself. “Stephen must have told folks to come over for videos or something without telling me.” …a much more likely scenario than the “We just happened to be in the neighborhood. With food” that would have been Geoff & Beth’s story (note: Geoff and Beth live on the almost complete other side of town )).

He apparently told everyone that the theme was to be “Spring, and Shiny Things”, so not only did thirty of my bestest friends show up (and it seems like every single one of them brought a different cake — that must have been the secret psychic sub-theme), but I got all sort of pretty shiny and/or floral presents. Flowers (real and “eternal”), pretty scarves, books, seriously yummy chocolate, *two* new knives — an eating knife for SCA feasts and an antique Balinese kris — wacky Japanese tchatchki, five different hairsticks… it was an avalanche of loot. Oh, and one of the cakes was topped with the most mindboggling animatronic pyrotechnic musical candle thing, which I assume Alan must have scored on his last trip to Hong Kong. Plus, there was some home brewed beer leftover from Crown.

I’m not one to go all mushy, especially in a blog post, but it made me feel all warm and happy. Thanks, everybody.