Love Me Tender with a Birthday Bouquet, Lamb Chops, & a Happy, Happy Day!

This vibrant and redolent bouquet was delivered to my door this morning, signed:

We love you, Robin & Tim! I offer a sincere and warm thank you to

my sister-in-law and her husband in NC.

We had a grand Christmas with them and now THIS! It is beautiful!

News flash: I have had another birthday, and it was a big one!

No, the young cashier did not ask for my ID when I purchased some sherry and tawny port, but on the up side, my students from years past can still recognize me! Of every ten outings I make anywhere near home, I would say nine will surely put me face to face with a person I have had as a student. What a blessing that they always want to stop and visit for a moment!!

I have also had these adorable nesting sheep added to my existing herd of woolly Colin's Creatures. (Click here for his website.) I think this makes seven!

I shall need to round them up and do a head count.
Thank you, Cameron & Little Lisa Lou Who!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No Elvis sightings, but NPR played a lovely instrumental of "Love Me Tender" as one of their transition pieces this morning. And the young lady who gave me a facial (a birthday treat earlier this week) revealed to me that her father was indeed an Elvis Impersonator!
Weehhhhhhll, Thank You Vehhhry Much!

Happy Birthday, Pumpkin!

Cuyler

Kindergarten

Cuyler

Pre-school

Cuyler

2010

Still Plays With Cars...Happy Birthday #1

Just after high school graduation, we went in search of Wart!

Ah, the life of the child of an English teacher! According to our Oxford family, this stop in Glastonbury is just one of five or six places where Arthur may be buried? Could this be a National Trust plot to keep us all guessing? The influences of literature and stories of yore were not wasted on my child. He did take a degree in history, but that doesn't mean he really grew up!

My first born son is having a really big birthday today, but don't worry,

he still plays with cars. Here he is with wife and son stuffed into the 1969 TR6

he bought just before leaving for Iraq last year! Are we cozy?

Can you say, "Details, details, and more details?"

Cameron is definitely what you would call a "car guy." There is no way I could begin

to cover his vast interests in automobiles ( a genetic marker from both grandfathers is to blame)....I may ask him to do a Guest Spot here at TKR sometime in the future.

And more details....even the smallest detail matters....

The more vintage ...the better...

This is an Auburn speedster...

(click on photo to enlarge)

A man and his "MoonLander"

(aka 1968 VW Transporter)

Outside the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum

Auburn, Indiana where the above photos were taken

Porsche Rennsport Reunion at Daytona Speedway

This is one of my very favorite photos of my #1. We were visiting the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey and his passion for history and the mystical feel of the place were captured in his expression ....with one brown eye, one blue eye staring into his future!


I asked him, "If King Arthur had driven a vintage automobile,
what would it have been?"
Care to guess what his answer was?

The King & I: In Dixieland where we were born....

image by Andy Warhol

Whenever I hear Elvis sing his An American Trilogy...and the words

"in Dixieland where I was born

early, Lord, one frosty morning"

...then I must admit, I really do miss the boy! If you have had a TV or radio on or read the paper today, you know it is his 75th birthday. The TODAY show had a feature on him, and the day is young yet. I am sure America will never get over him, but some years these features have been sparse, like one birthday when all I heard of him was on a local radio station: "This morning an Elvis impersonator was spotted at the Dunkin' Donuts Shop in Columbus, GA." I remember sharing with The Colonel ( mine not Elvis's Col. Parker) that it was an all time low for the King, and his reply was pointed: "How do they know it was an impersonator?" The King lives!

Elvis has just always been part of the rock and roll musical scene, a backdrop to my tastes as I cut my teeth on the likes of Bob Dylan and The Beatles. I do remember playing his Heartbreak Hotel on my older sister's RCA 45 rpm little record player when I was a pre-schooler, and she was a classic fifties teenie bopper! I think I was in the first grade when I used to entertain my family with my own version of You Ain't Nothing but a Hound Dog!

Indeed, it was a frosty morning today. By the time I drove out for school, the temperature was 18 with a wind chill factor of 9! And that was at 10:00 because school had been delayed two hours! As usual, all the speculation about impending snow and ice, scared it away! We were just on the line BELOW it all! As I drove toward Georgia, I thought of all the places that did have snow and even colder temperatures in the South. I thought of the tiny one room shotgun house I had seen in Tupelo, Mississippi: The Elvis Presley Birthplace. I thought of his twin brother who died. And I thought of the little hospital near Birmingham where I was born. And I thought of my mother, who very nearly died in the weeks before she delivered me. Then I remembered that it was Andy Warhol who had said that every one has his fifteen minutes of fame. But because of the sun, the moon, and stars and January 8th, I get that fifteen minutes every year!

You see, dear readers, the King and I share a birthday.

self-portrait by FireLight
in the style of Warhol

Happy Birthday, Elvis Pelvis ...

and

Thank YOU very much!