It's November already?

Today is boy.imp's birthday.

(thank you for those kind thoughts)

Last night wife.imp realized that his birthday was upon us and we had not bought him a gift, a cake, anything. So she left it up to me to wrap his gift (a Christmas gift substituted nicely as his birthday gift) and to make dinner reservations.

Problem 1: While in college I roomed with my brother. We exchanged gifts that were stapled into brown paper bags. Oddly, neither of us were put off by the 'wrapping'. Probably because we knew that we were just going to tear it off and throw it away and that should we try to do a nice job, it never looked nice. That and we had no $$.

I did wrap the gift and wife.imp did her best not to stand too close to the offending tape job as the imps tore it apart. Which was rather nice of her because she does a fantastic job with straight edges and clean lines. My effort covered the entire box (this time) and had edges and the cut meandered like the slow moving Big Muddy from edge to edge.

Problem2: I took us to a restaurant that the imps used to love, but now prefer Bob Evans and McDonald's instead. The main reason for going was not the food, which was typically adequate, it was the Birthday tadoo that the staff puts on; yelling, cheering, getting the rest of the patrons to join in the celebration.

However, we merely witnessed this hubbub at another table. Our server, apparently thought boy.imp too young to stress for (yes, I did inform him that we were there to celebrate a birthday). I, in return, felt that a large tip was too much to stress for...