Thanks and thanks and more thanks
 

I can't thank enough all of the Cellar folks who came along, participated, celebrated, contributed, etc to my 40th SURPRISE birthday party tonight!

You guys are the greatest, and if I seemed out of it at all, it's because my head was spinning. (I'm trying to remember if I managed to introduce everyone...)

Pictures will be posted as soon as they can be downloaded from all the various cameras and resized.

I swear I smiled more tonight than I have all year.

Well, to the 50 people that I PM'd and emailed about a surprise thread tomorrow night, forget it. The cat's out of the bag so here it is. Have at the old fart.:D

Oh yeah, Happy Birthday to U....t.

Cheers to my most favorite toad! I salute you.
Its going to be a good year. xxoo

Gift Suggestions.
frankincense- noun
an aromatic gum resin obtained from african and asian trees of the genus boswellia and used chiefly as incense and in perfumes.

myrrh- noun
an aromatic gum resin obtained from several trees and shrubs of the genus commiphora of india, arabia, and eastern africa, used in perfume and incense.

gold- noun
a soft, yellow, corrosion-resistant element, the most malleable and ductile metal, occurring in veins and alluvial deposits and recovered by mining or by panning or sluicing. a good thermal and electrical conductor, gold is generally alloyed to increase its strength, and it is used as an international monetary standard, in jewelry, for decoration, and as a plated coating on a wide variety of electrical and mechanical components. atomic number 79; atomic weight 196.967; melting point 1,063.0°C; boiling point 2,966.0°c; specific gravity 19.32; valence 1, 3. c table at element.

:rolleyes:

Happy Birthday
 

Hey, Ton... Sorry I didn't make it. Having a little one makes it hard to make it to things like this. A friend forwarded me an invite and I really wanted to make it. I am VERY glad that you enjoyed yourself.

Thanks to everyone for doing this for him!!!

dulp! Better luck next time Bruce.

Happy Birthday Man! No matter how old I get I can always think, I'm younger than Tony. Many blessings for the coming year. Griff

Felicitations on your natal anniversary!

No matter how old you get, you can always think "I'm younger than HB!"

happy birthday UT! I barely know you,but what I do know of you so far, I like. I hope you are returned the good vibes you transmit. You are among the 15% of the cool peole in the world. keep up the good work!

Ah, to be 40 again! Full of piss and vinegar, grasping the world by its balls, ready to strike out and face any challenge...oh. Wait. That was 21, wasn't it.

Nevermind.

All the best wishes for you in the coming year. You are loved and appreciated, even if only by a group of people largely composed of text on a screen...
:)

I made a crude card for this occasion, UT. If it was a real card, the inside would read "Bill truly loved birthdays, but he drank, and consequently, his usual eloquence suffered a bit."

happy birthday!:D

WoooooHooooooooo!! Happy Birthday!

And but no, thank YOU for having such a cool place to hang out!!

Hey, happy birthday Tony. You're one of the swellest guys I've ever known. Jeepers!

Surprise!!

OK, I guess that didn't work so,

Happy Birthday!

:beer:

Pictures
 

http://cellar.org/2003/bd00.jpg
Please hold...

http://cellar.org/2003/bd01.jpg
Surprise - and it was. The blur here is the camera trying to auto-focus in the dark. But you can tell I'm freaked out!

http://cellar.org/2003/bd02.jpg
xoxoxoBruce, Lady Sycamore, Rob, and Sycamore

http://cellar.org/2003/bd03.jpg
Wolf, Lady Sycamore, Sycamore

http://cellar.org/2003/bd04.jpg
Dave, Wolf, and Slang in the amused state they were in all night.

http://cellar.org/2003/bd05.jpg
A speculative richlevy.

http://cellar.org/2003/bd06.jpg
Me and the cake.

http://cellar.org/2003/bd07.jpg
Sharon looks on at the cutting process, and I can be such a ham.

http://cellar.org/2003/bd08.jpg
Many non-cellarites: Alayne, Faye, Rob, Ken, Roberta, and me.

http://cellar.org/2003/bd09.jpg
The bill arrives: Syc, Roberta, me (hamming it up again), Sharon (the accountant grimaces at bills), Rob, SteveDallas

http://cellar.org/2003/bd10.jpg
Home with the dogs: Bean has good taste in beer. Pearl has good taste in wads of wooly fabric.

http://cellar.org/2003/bd11.jpg
SteveDallas watches Pearl gather a big wad of wooly in her mouth to suckle on it.

A good time was indeed had by all. :)

Happy Birthday, UT! I was very glad to be able to enjoy the time with you and everyone else!

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.

      Happy B-Day UT, and thanks. You making and maintaining the Cellar has enriched many a late night for me.

Onyx, I'm sorry that I did not invite you. We had a strict one retard limit, and we used that on Dave. Had we not picked him, he would have thrown a temper tantrum and started pulling on his testicles.

No hard feelings?

(I only invited people in the immediate area except for Dave, who's only 2 hours away, and Slang, who was coming down anyway for QT with Wolf. If you lived here in Philadelphia, you probably would have gotten an invite.)

Happy B-Day UT. I'm glad to know that you are older than I am....

Happy birthday UT! You're a good man!:D

HB, UT!

I hope it's a good one.

Happy Birthday
Sorry I'm late, I've been really busy at work
From Leah, Sydney Australia.
:cool: :beer:

Have to be somebody elses though, because UT's not having any more birthdays.:D

Happy B-day UT - YOU ROCK!!!!

(And you are cute too. Once I kick out the BF - I'm dropping you a line.)

Oh, sure...tell a man who is about to start living alone that you'll do him *someday*...

Sigh. ;)

I was just trying to point out that he's hot. Me and the BF are in for the long haul. (don't really believe in marriage and all that.) I just wanted him to know. GEEZ

And he might tell her she has to take a number.:D No offence, Dani. Just the traffic you know.;)

That's cool Dani, I appreciate it!

I don't have any plans or prospects so you are currently #1 on the wait-list. Please keep me updated daily on the progress of your relationship, and I will work on getting the plane tickets together.

(kidding, good gawd can't you people tell when im kidding)

I, however, am <b>not</b> kidding, dani. If you are single, and I am single, and you could stand to be with a video game nut that's trying to play guitar and lose the computer habit... :)

Jenni is nice enough to begin with, but she's on the road to sainthood for dealing with this retard.

It's true!

if someone had told me, say, a week beforehand, instead of calling me and leaving a message on my answering machine at 8 AM the day of the event, that said "hey jen, don't post anything on the cellar about me going to philly...it's a surprise party for the tone" or something to that effect...and if i didn't live in california, i would have come too!

HAPPY BDAY UT !!!!

Happy late birthday, y'old fart. I was pretty worried when I logged on for the first time in over a month to find two PMs from Bruce with cryptic titles. Sorry I couldn't be there!

Cryptic? Moi? Sorry.:blush:

Tob is back! :)

Yeah, they actually put computers in at this dump. And they're hella fast too, since they're using a satellite broadband provider instead of the slow military connection.

Time is pretty limited for me though (which is a good thing, because it also means the days fly by!) so I prolly won't be posting much for a while...

Well, good to hear from ya!