wish Moose a magnificent birthday on May 27th!

I got bogged down with too many things and neglected to wish you a timely birthday greeting. But I hope that your year is fulfilling, bringing unexpected joys!

Hope you had a lovely time, and that you’re still carrying on with the celebrations. Hopefully, in light of your tap-dancing hobbit experience, you’ll enjoy this cake…

I hope your birthday brought you all the happiness that you deserve!

Moose and I went to see Lord of the Rings: the Musical, to celebrate her birthday on Tuesday. We’d both been looking forward to it for ages so were in a state of huge excitement when we got to the theatre.

The tickets had promised that “Middle Earth comes alive 15 minutes before showtime” and I’d had images of foliage waving about, but in fact it was a bunch of hobbits on the stage using a net to catch little star-like things floating about in the air. Interesting. At 7.30 they started line-dancing, which was more like it.

Visually the production was stunning, with the stage spinning round frequently to reveal another set, and operating at different levels. The lighting was also great, and the monsters were absolutely terrifying – particularly the Nazgul and Shelob. Shelob was enormous and had eight puppeteers operating her legs, which gave her ghastly spider-like movements.

Early on, Bilbo put on the ring and disappeared, and we were quite gobsmacked – I still haven’t worked out how they did it!

There were also some amazing acrobatics, with orcs spinning all over the place – a couple of them on false legs which reminded me of Oscar Pistorius. Others had elongated arms, and at one point they came down the aisle into the audience and started terrorising people. I had known this would happen because C had tipped me off, and it was amusing seeing the orcs snarling at people. Then we suddenly realised that in the row in which Moose and I were sitting, the two seats next to us were empty, and next to them was the side aisle – so I was in the firing line. Sure enough an orc emerged from the side door and started prodding me in the leg and snarling which was really quite unpleasant. I wish I could pretend I was the Iron Leopard and stabbed him with my emergency corkscew, but in fact it was hard to know how to react so I gave him a shove and eventually he went away to bother somebody else.

After that I was traumatised which manifested itself in a fit of the giggles when Aragorn, whose voice was like Richard Dawkins (or Professor Yaffle in Bagpuss) started singing – I had hoped that he might have a nice singing voice to compensate for his grating speaking voice, but no such luck. Frodo also annoyed us because he spoke with a yokellish accent – which might be fine for Sam Gamgee but isn’t Frodo supposed to be a posh hobbit? Everyone else was good though – Gandalf hamming it up with his staff-twirling, and Gollum was excellent, capering about in a disturbing way.

The music was patchy – I enjoyed the dancing on tables in the pub number, and there was another traditional hobbit folk song that was ok, but otherwise there was rather too much Enya-style warbling from the elf women which wasn’t really my cup of tea.

The story had been edited a lot – the first half was the Fellowship of the Ring and then they combined the two other books in the second half, and skipped a lot of battles. Which made sense, as there might have been diminishing returns otherwise. The whole thing lasted for 3 hours, which was about right. All in all we had an excellent time and I shall remember it for the rest of my life!

for your (belated) birthday, I thought you and I could mosey down over to the Smiling Moose Deli for a healthy, hearty Moosey Birthday Sandwich, whaddya say?

Have a great year ahead, and many benedictions to you for a fabulous year ahead!

Especially to fellow Geminis.

I’m late with your birthday. This week has been like that.

On the other hand, nowhere is it written that you will celebrate for only one day. My advice is, stretch it out. Enjoy. Revel in it.

You are worth celebrating!

Happy (belated) birthday. May it begin a year of happiness.

Every year, on your birthday,
I think about how glad I am
that you were born,
how thankful I am
to have you in my life.
Every year is another year
filled with the special joys you bring
just by being yourself.
Every year, when you open your birthday gifts,
realize what a gift you are
to everyone who knows you,
especially me.
Happy Birthday!

A year ago I tardily made some wishes for Moose that went “May Moose find the motivation daily to stick with exercise and diet in order to halve BMI. May she find the time to read, particularly those 20 foreign language books. And may that little voice inside speak loudly, so that it doesn’t need a big stick to make Moose listen.” Frankly those wishes still hold true to this day, but I have some new ones to add as well.

May she always hold a postive frame of mind, and see the opportunities around her instead of the challenges or obstacles that may divert her from task. May she actually take the time to focus on her budget and acknowledge that making her own meals does save money and will help her with her BMI goals. And may she reach 222.

I was becoming a bit disheartened at finding umpteen photos of moose in snow—come on people, moose don’t cease to exist in spring & summer! And I for one am weary of cold (right now it’s 8 degrees C in Chicago). But finally I came upon these Hawaiian moose.

And I invited them over to wish you a happy birthday. They & I would also like to wish you a highly creative year with your art, writing & cooking experiments, monthly getaways, & delicate eating!