Happy birthday to me

It's gonna be really tough to stay focused at work today. Even though my 44-year-old bones are feeling their age more and more, I'm like a four-year-old when it comes to my birthday.

Mother Nature greeted me this morning with balmy breezes, blue skies and ... hello, sunshine! It's always beautiful on my birthday. I can't remember a year when the weather was yucky on May 20, though there must have been one or two. Will someone please check the Almanac?

Birthdays at our office mean lunch and silly cards and treats - so we're ordering in from Fralia's and there will be Culver's frozen custard. Mmmmmmmmm .... Proposal? What proposal? Deadlines? Huh?

And tonight Kay is taking me to Taboon in Flint for Middle Eastern food - halfway between here and Ann Arbor - so Lizz and Kelly can meet us!

Whenever I think of Taboon, I think of the first time I went there with Midori a few years ago. We had to take Lizz to a meeting and didn't want to drive all the way back to Saginaw and then back again, so Midori and I decided to stay in the area and go shopping and then to lunch at this place I'd heard about from a friend at work. Midori kept saying, "In Japanese, Taboon maybe means something." And I'd say, "What does it mean?" And she'd rearrange the words and try to say it again ... it was like the Abbott and Costello "Who's on first?" skit. I finally got it: Taboon means MAYBE in Japanese.

OK. Guess you had to be there.

Have a lovely day ... I hope the sun is smiling on you wherever you are!