<p>It’s gonna take me all day to light these candles. Astro, how many between us?! :eek: Me thinks that we may have over 100 candles on the birthday sheet cake. That’s 100-something birthday wishes, and no birthday spanks because I’ll have to rip your arms off if you try. </p>
<p>Astro & Sluggie’s Birthday Wishes 2008</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Sluggie’s Traditional Birthday Wish: I hope I live a long and happy life. :)</p></li>
<li><p>Sluggie’s Traditional Birthday Wish (revised): I hope I don’t contract the plague from helping my kids clean their apartments when they move. :eek:</p></li>
</ol>
<p>OOOooo…the evilNeighbor piñata! ::::thwack!::::: That’s for trying to kill my big elm tree. :::double thwack!:::: That’s for telling your pilates friends to park in my driveway. </p>
<p>I feel much better now! </p>
<p>Jym, I’ll be heading to the Post Office later to pick up my Virginia Slims scented birthday card. ;)</p>
<p>Hey all! Back from Peru in time to send happy birthday greetings, and to suggest that if you ever happen to sprain your ankle trekking down Warmiwanyusqa Pass (Dead Woman Pass), be sure to do it with a group of Quechua porters including Felipe, Vicente, and Dicintes who will wrap you in a sling and throw you on their backs like a load of camp equipment and RUN DOWN THE FREAKING INCA TRAIL STEPS IN SANDALS with you wrapped around their backs, if you can’t handle the steep downhills.</p>
<p>What an experience. After I take a shower and get a doctor’s appt. to look at this ankle, I’ll see about posting some photos and maybe a travelogue.</p>
<p>Short version: if you have ever entertained the thought of visiting Peru, let me wholeheartedly encourage you in that thought. Wholly unexpected, and utterly captivating.</p>
<p>Felipe, Vicente, and Dicintes - aren’t they momof3inca’s kids? I say bring 'em on in; with them plus the Italian soccer players, it’ll be a wing-ding of a party. Happy birthday, sluggie!</p>
<p>italian soccer player? Did some one say italian soccer player? Where is SB? She will be so happy that you got her such a nice present (and it isn’t even her birthday )</p>
<p>Well sluggie happy birthday to you! and SBMom too! And Astrophysicsmom! And everyone else with candles they are bringing out from the drawer under the kitchen phone:)</p>
<p>Bringing up the birthday rear I will be REALLY OLD in a week or so…</p>
<p>Hello Alley denizens and congratulations to the birthday girlies and traveling adventurers!</p>
<p>And BTW something seems to have happened to me and I now LIKE cilantro. Eeek. So gimme some of that guacamole from the hills surrounding SBmom’s domicile and a few big fatr tortilla chips and I will hunker down here with a large class of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. Cheers and many happy returns of the days to all.</p>
<p>(Did I use up my yearly quota of exclamation marks?)</p>
<p>It’s Happy Autumn Solstice! Alu is back and she is now cilantro-eating! Que bueno! </p>
<p>But…, but…</p>
<p>Anyone else just a little worried? I mean, she’s been AWOL quite a while. And then she shows up with a yen for cilantro. And she’s !!!-point happy. And she drinks Sauvignon Blanc by the class, not the glass!</p>
<p>Well, as long as she’s even a close facsimile of our own Poster-Previously-Known-to-Hate-Cilantro Alumother, I’m in a fiesta mood :D. </p>
<p>I promise. It’s me. The class of Sauvignon Blanc? Serendipitous typo. The cilantro? I think it’s just gotta be hormonal or something. The !!!, well, you know, how long can anyone sustain melancholy? It has a half-life, a half-life to cheerfulness, to occasional joy, to sometime glee. </p>
<p>I am however on a cc 12 step program, like many others, so just remember if you don’t see me posting I am here in spirit. Or spirits, as the case may be.</p>
<p>Fundamentally it is this. How could any of us depart altogether until SB’s SFS makes his way to one of those institutions that can’t be named, or, like sluggbugg’s guy, says to heck with it and makes his name in the world of alternative culture? Huh? Huh?</p>
::::confetti:::::wheeeeee!:::::: 
</p>