October 10, 2004

October 10, 2004

The Pinery Provincial Park

DAY 115

 

Today is my 50th birthday. Happy Birthday to me ! ! !

My horoscope for today says that I may be earning a reputation as a bit of a maverick, but that I simply don't care. Hear, hear !

I've been sort of dreading the arrival of my 50th birthday, but not in the typical fashion of dreading such a milestone in life. I've been dreading how this lifestyle choice denies me the opportunity to have a big "blow out" birthday party celebration with family and friends, as I think most people do on their milestone birthdays. Oh, well ... at least it's not as bad as what I thought it might be when an employee asked, after we returned from celebrating Joanne's 50th birthday in Paris, France, what would we be doing for my 50th birthday ? I surmised that I would likely be having a birthday dinner in a road side Denny's, somewhere in rural Arkansas, having Happy Birthday sung to me by a waiter named Bubba.

Joanne worked hard to make this a very special day for me. She succeeded. Thank you, my love. When I returned from showering this morning, she had prepared a special birthday brunch of French Toast made with cinnamon raisin bread, served with the freshly made jam we bought yesterday at the farmer's market in Grand Bend. Beside my plate was a hand made birthday card. I've never had a hand made card before. She drew a modified "reproduction" of an Inuit painting that I really liked at the McMichael Gallery. The original painting that I saw and liked was entitled "Joyfully I See 10 Caribou". The birthday card drawing was entitled "Joyfully I See ... You And Me".

I received birthday greetings by telephone from my sister, and Joanne's sister. Thank you, Sharon. Thank you, Lorri.

Perhaps the biggest, and most pleasant surprise of the day was to receive birthday greetings by telephone from Dwight Atkinson and Jennifer Lamb in Vancouver. It's been a very long time since we've had an opportunity to chat. Thank you very much, Dwight and Jenny, for taking the time, and making the effort, to phone. Unfortunately, while they were chatting with Joanne, after chatting with me for awhile, we lost the phone call. The cellular signal here at Pinery is very weak, and interruptions in calls are frequent. I've had quite a bit of difficulty staying connected online long enough to update my blog in the last few days.

For dinner, we went to the Oakwood Inn Resort just on the other side of Grand Bend. Tonight was their Thanksgiving buffet dinner. It was quite a spectacular dinner in quite a spectacular place. The Oakwood Inn Resort reminds me a lot of Minaki Lodge north of Kenora, Ontario where we celebrated most Thanksgiving / birthday / anniversary weekends until we moved to Ottawa in 1988. Before dinner, we walked around the grounds of the resort, which is a large wooded piece of property, a few hundred feet inland off the beach on Lake Huron. Their dining room is an old "log cabin" structure. Our dining table was against a window, overlooking the large pond with fountain on the first fairway of their golf course.

We ate too much !

When we returned to the trailer, Joanne lit the candles on the birthday cake she had baked for me this afternoon, and sang "Happy Birthday" to me. We were both too stuffed from dinner to eat birthday cake. We went for a short walk. It was a cool night, with a very clear, very dark, brightly star lit sky. Very romantic. After our romantic, little stroll ...

Happy Birthday, Daniel.

DSK