10 November 2001
Last year: The incompetants who'd organized the fund raiser had given her the bag of things people had ordered, and a list of names and phone numbers, but no addresses, and nothing to indicate what each person had ordered.
I'm not usually the sort of person who lists out every single thing they get for their birthday, or Christmas. Haven't since I was a kid. I'll mention a few especially-cool things, and leave it at that.
But Matt managed to find such a wonderful way of presenting my presents this year that I really want to share it with you - and because of the way he presented them, I'm going to have to tell you everything he gave me. Just try to understand that I'm not bragging.
Or, at least, I'm bragging on my husband, not the presents.
The first present I opened had a little card on top, which read: "On November 9th, 1965 at 5:16PM, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, metropolitan New York City, and some small parts of Pennsylvania lost power. Power wasn't restored until morning of the next day." (The date was written in red instead of black - I put it in italics here.) The present itself: A MagLite flashlight, and a pack of batteries.
The next present had a card on it as well: "Tom Fogerty was born on November 9th, 1941, and played rhythm guitar and sang some vocals for Creedence Clearwater Revival. While his brother John is better known, Tom was the one who actually started the band." The present itself: CCR's Greatest Hits album.
You begin to see the theme? That's about where I caught on. Isn't Matt wonderful?
"John Lennon met his wife-to-be, Yoko Ono, on November 9th, 1966 at her solo exhibition 'One Woman Show aka Unfinished Paintings and Objects.' The piece that captivated John was a ladder under a painting on the ceiling. The text in the painting said 'YES'" This came with the CD Lennon Legend: The Very Best of John Lennon.
"Starship Troopers was released in the United States on November 9th 1997. Heinlein fanboys hoped it would be an accurate movie version of the book, with its fascist government and powered armor suits. They were wrong. It's all about the 'splodo." (The "'splodo" thing is an in joke that wouldn't be funny if I bothered to explain it.) This card was attached, as I'm sure you've guessed, to the Starship Troopers DVD.
"Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and wit, whose first book of poems was published when he was 19. He was a major contributor to BBC Radio during the late 1940s, and titled his autobiography, 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog.' He died on November 9th, 1953 in New York City." With this I received Dylan Thomas: Collected Poems.
Taped to the collection Transformations by Anne Sexton was, "Anne Sexton was born on November 9th, 1928. She was a 'confessional' poet, and won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1966. To follow were a Guggenheim Fellowship, Ford Foundation grants, honorary degrees, and professorships at Colgate University and Boston University. Uh, wow."
I'd already known Carl Sagan shared my birthday. The note Matt attached to a copy of his "Pale Blue Dot" read, "Carl Sagan was born on November 9th, 1934. He received doctorates in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of Chicago in 1960, taught at Harvard, and was quite possibly the most well known scientist on the planet at the time of his death. He also smoked pot regularly from the 1960s until his death. Was he P's role model?" (P being my pot-smoking physics-major ex-boyfriend.)
"On November 9th, 1953, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Toolson v. New York Yankees that major league baseball did not violate the anti-trust laws in the Sherman Act. I'm not sure whether this is good or not, but I'm still rooting against the Yankees." This was attached to The Baseball Fan's Companion: How To Watch the Game Like An Expert by Nick Bakalar.
My husband is just the coolest guy!
And now, I guess, I should go and finish cleaning up the house for the party, and frying up the sopapillas and such. I'll see you all on Monday!
Song of the Day:
Don't Stop Me Now (Queen)
Current Projects:
- I should be cleaning the house for the party. Instead, I'm writing this. Hee.