Thanks, everyone, for the good thoughts, and especially to uchiha615 for starting the thread and to Caroline for the beautiful and appropriate card. When you're this old, birthdays tend to be a "stealth" event, so the powers that be don't catch on that you've outlived your father now by 13 years. (Though I did have an uncle that made it to 100, publishing his last book at 99).
So it wasn't as wild and crazy as some birthdays. I got a Dirt Devil Scorpion to help clean furniture and dusty corners, new underware, a cookbook on traditional British cookware (now I need to find a butcher's shop that sells oxen kidneys), and a yellow-and-black cap to go with my Hufflepuff scarf (both have official Hogwarts seals).
My wife and I went to the restaurant in the renovated hotel in the nearby town. The lady at the next table recollected when the place was a ruin with shattered windows, but it has been carefully reconstructed with the help of period photographs. (It served as one of the sets of the movie
The Runaway Bride.) Now it eerily recreates dining experiences of the 1950s. I had oysters, which are a specialty of the area and super good this time of year.
We both ate too much candy and cookies and pie for Christmas, so we skipped dessert and came home to a pound cake with chocolate icing added. There were seven candles, one for each decade successfully passed and one for hope. I wished I'd prevail on the nice lot coming up on YJ next morning, and my wish came true.
iceman57, thanks for the thought. I have not forgotten about the
Condition Green Ep. 6 storyboard that I think is in the hand of Shigeyasu Yamauchi (DBZ, Saint Seiya). The drawing style is so odd and impressionistic, though, that it is difficult to present. It will need a closer look, and I will probably post up only sample pages in my gallery, not in as much detail as the Ep. 3 storyboard (by Yamauchi's assistant Toru Yamada), which is in a much more approachable style.
The characters in the Ep. 6 storyboard look more ... well ... DBZy.
Watch for Sensei's 2011.01 upgrade, now being put together, in a couple of days.