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THE SAGA CONTINUES, Dear Reader. This damp, gray day was the sixth in my Birthday Year. While birthday aspects appear to be on the wane, they have not disappeared! Yesterday's lunch with an old and dear friend was in honor of my birthday. It just so happens that the outing was in honor of her birthday, too, making it doubly celebratory! (I am quite willing to share! Have you a birthday during the remainder of my birthday year, Reader Dear? Wow! Let's have a joint celebration!)

When Tina and I lunch together (we don't restrict it to our birthday event) , I usually pick her up at her place of work. In the few minutes that I waited for her yesterday, I was treated to a birthday sidewalk parade! ( The folks pulling the wagons and the adorable little tots being pushed and pulled and carried along likely thought they were just going home from morning preschool or toddler gym [or, well, something of the sort] but that didn't dampen my appreciation!])





Day Five didn't sport bright sunshine, but it was pleasantly warm enough to enjoy outside seats at the cafe. The birthday lunch was delightful. Were it not for a nagging pain in my back that even now causes me to avert my eyes when in proximity to the holiday monuments I built on Day Four, I could pronounce Day Five an unqualified celebratory success!

Today's highlight, then, was an extended phone chat with yet another old and dear friend. Our visit was lengthy, prolonged, stretched-out; um...let's just say that lots of babies were born and folks died and the mailman came and went as we talked; stocks fell and Occupy Wall Street activists assembled and dispersed; the grass grew and my hair grew (likely yours, too, Reader Dear) and the sun secretly made its descent behind the curtain of clouds. I could say the visit was like a long cold drink of water, but that's more of a summertime expression, and I much prefer to say it was like an elegantly-iced, rich chocolate, made-from-scratch birthday cake! (Precisely the kind that is apt to appear when I get to go all the way to West Virginia and see this dear friend in person; oh, yes, on many a visit this cake or its cousin has shown up; there didn't even have to be a birthday!)

Were it not for the hand-to-my-back cringing and creeping around caused by the distinctly un-celebratory pain, Day Six would officially be declared first-rate.
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