Thank you, everyone!

Thank you to everyone who had a part it helping me pull off the birthday surprise for Demetrius. I certainly can't take anything near full credit for the surprise phone call from Howard that he got. I had a number of helpers and co-conspirators. Maybe I could say that I "led the fight" to get Howard to call Demetrius. And of course, a big thank you to Howard!

Demetrius was genuinely surprised, and I am happy that there was something so special and memorable about the day. We always celebrate these days eventually. Some time between now and next birthday I will make him a homemade German chocolate cake. At some point sooner than that, we will probably all go out to eat, but since his birthday fell in the middle of a week of deadlines, a lot of the celebration had to be postponed. So, it made the special phone call stand out that much more.

By the way, this isn't just us being old married people--we even celebrated our first Valentine's Day together a full week after the actual day.

Thank you to everyone who posted kind, appreciative messages in this blog. I e-mailed a number of you about the birthday tribute page and blog I set up, and also posted about it in some Yahoo groups. It was a challenge to try to pull this off without posting about it in the blog (although as busy as Demetrius was this week, I might have been able to safely do so after all!) Again, thank you to everyone who helped make my husband's birthday special and memorable, and reminded us that we are part of such a wonderful community.

By the way, for anyone who didn't see this in the comments, jc created a birthday picture for Demetrius.

To which Demetrius responded,

Thanks, JC! Why diet or buy suits when you've got Photoshop?
But, why stop there? (click)