kareina

This year my birthday is The Answer. Pitty the Earth got destroyed before we discovered the question.

Spent yesterday doing more packing and moving, and today moving and scrubbing the walls. I also received the dirt tires for my trike (yay! My new house is on a dirt road, so I needed them), so as soon as I post this I'll celebrate my birthday by pedalling down the hill to my new home, and spend the evening trying to create order in the chaos there. Tomorrow: more cleaning, and (finally) packing all of my kitchen toys. Decided that part could wait till the carpet cleaners got here tomorrow so we focused on getting the carpeted rooms ready to go.

Happy Birthday to both gurdymonkey and tafelspitz! As I type there are 30 minutes left of your natal day in my time zone, but oodles left of it in yours. I celebrated by attending an SCA event where I made progress on the case for my new hammer dulcimer, enjoyed good food, good conversation, and the happy sound of armoured combat and field heralds in the background. Then I came home and kept packing. Had to stop because not only was it getting late, but we've used up the boxes we'd brought home, so we need to pick up more. I hope you both truly enjoy your birthdays, may your next year in life bring you much joy and interesting things to learn.

And an additional Happy Birthday to the_cheese_lady, which starts here in about 30 minutes, but not for a fair bit longer in your time zone. I'll celebrate by moving house, but I hope you celebrate with something even more entertaining! May your day bring you joy, and your next year bring adventures of the positive sort!


(Yes, for those of you keeping track--that is three days in a row with no thesis progress. Good thing I *like* moving...)

I've just heard from the amazingly talented artist, who has been building it, and he says that my hammer dulcimer is almost ready, I should be able to pick it up next week. Talk about a truly wonderful birthday gift! He tells me "I ended up setting yours up with the modern
tuning { still looks medieval } its a 17/16 dulcimer that gives you bass strings and treble strings set out in fourths and fifths it's fairly large hope that's ok, if not I'll keep it!!" Somehow, I doubt that he will need to keep it, I've wanted one of these things since I first saw them back in the mid-1980's, but every time I looked into them, they were out of my price range. With the quality of the work Harry does, I think that it will be more than worth the wait!

And whilst I'm bouncing about my wonderful birthday gift for myself, I also offer really bouncy, happy birthday greetings to the lovely western_duchess (today my time) and handsome dd1066 (tomorrow my time). May you both get gifts you will love half as much as I'll love my new toy!

Excuse me, I need to go bounce some more!!!!

Oh--I nearly forgot--progress report: My advisor has gotten a spreadsheet working to calculate temperatures and pressures with yet another technique. I've gotten part of my data entered in, should get it usable to write something tomorrow, I hope...

And did I mention that my hammer dulcimer is nearly ready?

Happy Birthday to racaire1, may the day bring you more resources with which to continue to stitch such lovely items!

Unto the beautiful and talented with the pen katerit and the noble and talented with the sword sir_titus good wishes for a spectacular birthday and a brilliant new year of your lives.

I celebrated the anniversary of your births by attending the first Dance Practice our Barony has had since we lost our old site months ago, and had ever so much fun. Soon the sun will wend its way around to your side of the planet and bring the day to you. May you have even more fun on your day than I did whilst it was down here!

Here in Australia it is already the birthday of the talented ermine_rat. I think I'll celebrate this evening by going to a contra dance. I hope that your birthday is a time of joy for you, and that your next year is one of your best ever!

Today is the birthday of another of our housemates--this time it is my apprentice's birthday. So I packed away the rest of last week's cake into a cookie tin to free up the cake-plate for ( this week's cake. )




Having eaten more cake batter and filling than, perhaps, I should have, I will have plenty of energy for uni work this afternoon! Any of you who can make it to the regular Ynys Fawr Social Night at the Solar this evening can try the cake there...

As I mentioned yesterday, today is baronsnorri's birthday, and we celebrated with a fruit cake & double cream, followed by a hike (photos will hopefully follow).

But today is also the birthday of donnanofg, who has been a dear friend since I was 17 years old, not that we've seen much of one another in the past decade or so. Since time zones have done their trick, and it is now his birthday there, as well as here, I thought I'd take a short break from uni work to wish them both a very, very happy birthday!

So, to two wonderful men, on opposite sides of the world: I hope that this anniversary of your births marks the start of a truly stupendous year for you!

Tomorrow is baronsnorri's birthday, so I took the time this afternoon to make him a cake. He is fond of fruit cake with so much fruit in it that you can barely see the cake.

So I took this bowl of fruit

(two types of dried figs, two types of dates, currents, sultanas, raisins, dried pears, dried apricots, glace cherries (both red and green), glace pears, glace ginger, candied citrus peel, dried papaya, glace pineapple, dried apple, and a few other miscellaneous "mixed" dried fruits.)





and about 2/3 of a 500 g bag of Brazil nuts, and enough cake batter to make a single non-fruit-filled cake(made with butter, dark brown sugar, Leatherwood honey, golden syrup, flour, eggs (fresh from baronsnorri's hens), milk, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, cubebs, ginger, mace, allspice, and nutmeg). Needless to say, when combined, a second cake pan was required...





Happy Birthday baronsnorri! I hope you like it!

Hello Beautiful Countess!

I celebrated your birthday by tromping over a hill-side with a second-year geology class, answering their questions on geologic mapping. Down here your Birthday was a lovely spring day, with rain, sun, rain, sun, rain, sun, and then, for variety, some more rain followed by more sun! I hope that there it is a perfect late summer day, full of good things for you to enjoy, and that your next year turns out to be the best yet!