Mummified and Yet Another Big Birthday

September seems to be rife with important birthdays and one of the most important of the year rolls around today. We are celebrating the birth of Keene Friend today. Well, we’re not, because when we invited him out to dinner, he already had a full dance card. That figures because that’s the kind of guy he is, very popular. He’s more brother than friend and the master of understated, very sly, dry humor for which is justifiably famous. He is an indelible part of the family. When I was in the Army, he would show up to shovel the snow off my mother’s driveway. He never forgets one of my kids’ birthdays. On that note, although he’s never had any children of his own, he treats the kids of his close friends as his extended family. He proudly displays their pictures on his fridge. My kids love him as an uncle which is what he’s called within the family. Some relationships are closer than blood.

The Birthday Boy

With my Favorite Panamanian, Please Don't ask Her for Decorating Advice (Again)

Fixture at Family Events, with Cantankerous, My kids, The ABFA and Great Aunt

While we weren’t able to get together with him today, we’ll rectify that later this week with one of the biggest social events of our year, our mutual high school reunion. It’s revealing and a little disturbing that this is the 50^th anniversary of our high school graduation. How the hell did we get this old? That’s actually a very good question considering some of the things we did fifty years ago, going 70MPH on North Lincoln Street (what the hell were we thinking!). Then there was the whole over the car roof beer bottle toss at signs. Again, surprising we made it this far. I am so looking forward to seeing all the classmates which will, of course, include, along with Keene Friends 1 & 2, the PCR, Cantankerous, the Kindergarten Friend, the CRC, and all those “girls” I had mad crushes on in high school but was too shy to ever talk to. Very cool indeed.

With his Cousin, the PCR, Who we'll See this Week!

Happy Birthday Big Guy!

Back at home we are at an important transitional change in the Favorite Panamanian’s vast garden complex. Although the weather doesn’t seem to have gotten the message that summer is over, her garden plants have started to wither. This marks the annual introduction of the mums. She recently ran across a huge sale on the autumnal flower and that meant a series of trimming the old and planting the new in garden complex. I managed to get them all into the ground with a minimum of supervision, calls from her friends helped in that regard. An important lesson to learn for future endeavors where wifely supervision in inevitable and automatically unwelcome.

Summer Plants Withering

Replaced the Next Day

Around all this planting we snuck in a date night where we saw Equalizer 3. It's tough to string together three quality movies in a series. It helps immensely if you have Denzel along to make it happen. This one starts out with an entire mafia complex learning to their eternal rest that it wasn't a good idea to cross Robert McCall. He sticks around Italy for the rest of the film assisting a village on the Amalfi coast against even more mafia types, who hadn't gotten the word. A very picturesque setting for a blood bath. It was cool to see Denzel and Dakota Fanning reunited so many years after their Man on Fire epic turn. It did make me feel old.  really good action movie with Denzel once again, dominating, but you expect that, still so cool he delivers each and every time.

Two movies fell in my A-Z watch, both keepers: From Here to Eternity, so cool to see my old post, Schofield Barracks, in Hawaii; and From Paris with Love, underrated, awesome Luc Besson action film, Travolta as you’ve never seen him.

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RECURRING CHARACTERS:                                     

ABFA – Amazing Best Family Athlete - my daughter in law; BR3 – Blog Reader #3 – granddaughter #3; BRS - Blog Reader the Sequel - second granddaughter; Cantankerous Friend – friend since grade school who likes to argue about everything, poses as radical leftist to attract women; CRC - Connecticut Riverboat Captain – another close friend from high school, renowned sailor of the big river; Curbside Girls – close friends of my daughter acquired during him her single days in Brooklyn; Deckzilla – our backyard deck which grew to monstrous dimensions once my wife got involved in planning; Favorite Panamanian - the wife (of course); FBR - First Blog Reader - first granddaughter; First Friday – celebrations to mark the First Friday of the Week; Great Aunt - my elder sister; Keene Friends 1 & 2 – friends since high school from my home town of Keene, NH; Kindergarten Friend – friend since kindergarten whom I reunited with after many years; Maine and Virginia Musqueteras – two close friends of my wife – her US sisters, my wife is the 3^rd Musquetera (musketeer); Namesake Nephew – son of Great Aunt and Soxfather named after me; Neighborhood Mafioso - wife's close friend and Panamanian mafia member; PanaGals – female relatives /friends of my wife from Panama; Panamanian/Latin Mafia – inevitable group of Latino friends my wife accumulates wherever we have lived & their spouses; PCR - Pittsburgh College Roommate– high school friend, also a “Minor Celebrity” in Pittsburgh; PCR+1 - Pittsburgh College Roommate’s wife; Riggins - also known as the Grandpuppy, son's dog; Soxfather - my brother in law; Tia Loca – wife’s younger sister; Wingman – my son in law; Wingmom – Wingman’s mom, of course