Happy B-day once again! Had a great time and your house is phat and all dat. :D And the dogs...too cute for words! ;)

40 years ago today I was planning a small dinner party for friends, having been told by the doctor the day before that I would not be giving birth for at least 2 weeks. UT, being UT, arrived when he was ready rather than when he was told, and I got out of having to cook dinner!

We all benefit from his arrival...

Thanks Kat, You done good !! :thumb:

Did anyone get a picture of Sharon pointing the knife at Tony?

Now I can reveal how this all came to fruition...

Sharon found my e-mail address on Sycamoreland (one that I have for people to submit comments or questions about the site), and sent this to me on October 20th:

Hi Terry,

It's Sharon. I wanted to let you know that Tony's 40th birthday is coming
up on November 17th.

With everything going on right now, I thought it would be nice to have a
birthday party for him. If we could make it a surprise, that would be all
the better. I understand that it may be awkward for me to be there, so I
can certainly bow out. But I would like to contribute a few hundred dollars
to make it happen and to make it nice for him.

I thought that maybe you could arrange for a small group of local Cellar
people to take him out to dinner (there is a restaurant that he likes that
is very close to our house - it's called the Fitzwater Station). Then
everyone could come back to our house and hang out.

Let me know your thoughts. I'm writing to you from work so that Tony
doesn't see any email correspondence about this. He doesn't read my email,
but I just wanted to make sure he doesn't see any "birthday traffic" across
his system. Let me know if there is a better email address to reach you.
You can also call me on my cell phone at 610-XXX-XXXX.

Thanks,
Sharon

At first I was concerned about throwing such an event, given the impending divorce. But I thought Sharon to be sincere, and after giving it some thought, I said "Sure, let's do it."

So, I sent out a PM to most of the Philly peeps to gauge interest...and there was plenty. So, I chose the date, Sharon booked the room, and the ball was rolling.

The idea of the gift certs for Sam Ash came to me almost immediately, especially when Sheppsie started talking about the ZZ Top cover band. And so, I gathered the funds via PayPal, and bought the gift certs Thursday night.

I asked Wolf and Slang to be there by 5:15 last night...we were going to set up some decorations that I had bought earlier in the day. Unfortunately, I got some bad directions from Rand McNally--not so much bad as that there are two Canal Streets that use a Phoenixville address: one in Phoenixville borough, the other in Mont Clare, just across the canal from Phoenixville (the one we really needed). I was hella pissed, and concerned that we would show up after Tony had already arrived--it was a few minutes past 6 when we finally got to the restaurant.

We pull into the restaurant lot, Dave looks around and says, "I don't see the TT or the GTI." I said, "Let's go!" and we proceeded to run into the restaurant. Fortunately, we got there about 5 minutes before Tony did. No time for decorations, but it was all good.

Glad you had a great time, Tony. Enjoy your real b-day tomorrow.

im sorry i couldnt make it. david may or may not have told you the whole story of the car mess and all, but i wanted to be there. :) hope you have a happy birthday!

Sorry I couldn't blast out there to rock with you today, Tony. But, given the outcome of today's football games, the innocent civilians of Philadelphia are probably the better for my absence.

Happy Birthday, yo. :)

Significant events of the third week of November, 1963
 

Tony (UT) born November 17.

Aldous Huxley dies on November 22.

John Kennedy assassinated November 22.

Coincidence? Ya, prolly.

Happy birthday wild man!

Happy Day Toad!

Sorry Brian and I couldn't make it this weekend, but our best wishes are headed your way!

:eek: You're HOW old? (I'da never thunk it)

Dagney

Happy Birthday UT!

Happy Birthday again Tony, and thanks to all who organized it & came for a good time. (I have some pics too, that I need to doctor up. The best one may be Bruce trying to make Tony's dogs jealous by munching on their favorite towel!)

It was great to see The Cellar "in person" again. Oh and Tony, I'm jealous of your sky. You once asked in an astronomy-related thread about the problem of light pollution. You not only have a very dark sky by suburban standards (no streetlights nearby, and you're not on top of the edge of Philadelphia like I am), there are few trees to block the horizon!

Yeah, we have a few streetlights, but they're really weak... not the sodium things that went into the townhouses down the street.

I'm not complainin'. Post-Ghost Recon, I say, bad bright lighting is easier to sneak around in than good low lighting... people don't understand that, so they demand these huge bright lamps, and create perfect areas of dark shadow where anyone can hide.

Yer birthday gift from me will be coming shortly. I couldn't chip in much to the whole Sam Ash certificate thing (I think syc put me down for $20 or $25), so.... just you wait. It's awesome.

(Maybe not as awesome as $225 of free music stuff, but it's pretty awesome.)

happy birthday!

Yep, that's one of the points the Dark Sky Association always makes--you can accomplish security goals with better-planned lighting that doesn't leak to the sky, and since you're pumping less light out of it it'll be cheaper too! And I feel it myself--my contacts make me very susceptible to glare at night, and I often find it very uncomfortable driving from areas of relative darkness thru those sodium vapor monsters and back out again. Or at least, if I don't know where I'm going and I have to look for street signs and landmarks and such.