KNITTING WITHOUT DOG HAIR IS NOT AN OPTION

Yesterday was my 40th birthday - I can't believe it.

I don't have much time this morning but I wanted to thank all of you who thought of me yesterday with cards, emails, text messages, phone calls, and gifts. I will write a longer post later this week.

Hubby left a very cute b-day card in the bathroom for me to find in the morning when I got up, which pretty much summed up yesterday's day:

And that really was my day - with a meeting and horrible traffic on the way home. Except hubby and I didn't throw a wild party to celebrate, but had sushi and wine and I got to open a lot of gifts. But more about that later.

AND - DRUM ROLL NOW - my parents had their 43rd anniversary yesterday!!! I don't know how they planned to have their first child 3 years after they got married, smack on the same day. Leave it to the Germans...

Mom & Dad - YOU ROCK!!!

Hubby took this picture when we were visiting my family in 2005. You can see one of my favorite lakes in the background. Its water comes from the melted snow from one of the skiing areas in the Alps. And yes, it takes the lake a long time to warm up during the summer. But the water is very clear. And girls don't have shrinkage, so we don't care about that. ;-)

And since it was my birthday - here are a couple of memes I picked up from the Knotty Girls.

The first one is SCATTERGORIES, and it’s harder than it looks!

Here are the rules:
~Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following.
~They MUST be real places, names, things…NOTHING made up!
~If you can’t think of anything, skip it.
~Try to use different answers if the person before you had the same 1st initial.
~You CAN’T use your name for the boy/girl name question.

Your Name: Claudia (my Dad named me after this actress.)

1. Famous Singer/Band: (The) Cure
2. 4 letter word: Cake (just had a birthday...)
3. Street Name: Church Street (we are in the South after all...)
4. Color: Coral
5. Gifts/Presents: Claudia’s Handpainted Yarn (yup, like it a lot and it's not my company - darnit...)
6. Vehicle: Corvette (my favorite car, but too crappy to buy one...)
7. Things in a Souvenir Shop: Candle
8. Boy Name: Claus (one of my uncles - variation of Klaus, meaning "victory of the people")
9. Girl Name: Carla (one of cousins - feminine form of Carl, meaning "man")
10. Movie Title: Casablanca
11. Drink: Cosmopolitan
12. Occupation: Construction worker
13. Celebrity: Claudia Cardinale (see above...)
14. Magazine: Creative Knitting
15. U.S. City: Cleveland, OH
16. Pro Sports Teams: Cowboys (Dallas, NFC East)
17. Reason for Being Late for Work: Cranky (well - not really a good excuse...)
18. Something You Throw Away: Caps (from bottles)
19. Things You Shout: Crap (when I drop a stitch...)
20. Cartoon Character: Cartman (my favorite South Park character...)

And here is the second one.

The rules: You go to Wikipedia and type in your birthday (day and month only). Then post three events, two births and one holiday that occurred on your birthday.

July 10

Three Events:
48 BC - Battle of Dyrrhachium, Caesar barely avoids a catastrophic defeat to Pompey in Macedonia.
1890 - Wyoming is admitted as the 44th U.S. state.
1938 - Howard Hughes sets a new record by completing a 91 hour airplane flight around the world.

Two Births:
1895 - Carl Orff, German composer (d. 1982)
1958 - Béla Fleck, American musician

One Holiday:
Bahamas - Independence Day.

That's all for today - no knitting content, sorry. I'll try to be back with pictures and more stories later this week...