Sushi birthday party

When you enter Ronnie's Sushi house in Anchorage, there is a tank full of live fish close to the door.

The girl on the left - Lisa - she is the reason we gathered here. It was her 24th birthday party. H'mmm? Did I just call her a girl? Twenty-four. That must mean she is a woman - a full-fledged, beautiful, talented, woman. But she is my little girl. She will always be my little girl. My little baby girl.

Behind her, you can barely see the forehead of her boyfriend, Bryce. Bryce's parents, Brian and Lorena, came, too, as did his little nephew, Logan.

Lisa, as photographed through my glass of water.

Margie, as photographed through my glass of water.

You will remember Ryan from Rex's birthday party. This is he and his girlfriend, Jessica, as seen through my water glass. I photographed everybody this way, including myself, and I was going to post them all, but this is enough. You get the idea.

Lisa's boyfriend, Bryce, bought this sushi boat. Margie tried to pay for it, but he got to the counter first. So Margie was going to pay for everything else - and there was quite a bit else - but Charlie beat her to it.

Well, if Charlie is going to pay for a huge portion of the dinner, then surely he should be seen through my water glass, too. Here he is. This is Charlie. It's not Dan, it's not Robert, it's not Michelle. 

It's Charlie.

He is a mighty generous and thoughtful man and he lives with a great black cat named Pizzles that Melanie rescued a few years back.

Kalib told a funny joke and everyone at that end of the table laughed. I would share the joke with you, but it was rather ribald, so I had better not.

Bryce's parents gave Lisa this Chicago Cubs hat as a birthday present.

I think that it was Jacob and Lavina who gave her this pair of shoes. I could be wrong. She got a variety of gifts and I cannot remember who gave her each one. I do know that Melanie gave her a table with a yellow top and Lisa was very pleased with it.

She and Bryce have been eating off the floor and were in need of a table.

I might exaggerate the circumstance just a little bit.

We then moved to Melanie's house for the cake and ice cream. Here is Diamond. Margie and I gave Lisa the mix-master, plus a spatula to go with it.

Jacob and Cassie.

Jessica, Kalib and Ryan.

Rex carries Lisa's birthday cake to her. Margie made the cake.

Lisa blows the candles out.

After she blows them out, the candles light right back up again. They are trick candles, that is why. Kalib is very amused by this unexpected turn of events.

It takes a great deal of blowing by multiple lungs, but, after a couple of hours, the candles had all been blown out. 

And there was a lot of spit on the frosting.

Kalib, who enjoyed his cake.

Melanie, Kalib and Rex dance.

I have a couple of friends in the hospital and I wanted to stop in and see them before we drove back to Wasilla, so Margie and I left a bit early. Kalib waves to his Grandma.

Let me note that there is a new pocket camera out now, called the G11. It is much better suited for low-light photography than is this G1O that I am using, and I have been tempted to buy it. I probably will. But right now, I hate to spend the $500.

My pro-cameras would produce much finer image quality, but I do not want to carry them to such a function. I want to carry only a pocket camera.

So I come knowing that the images will be noisy, grainy, with much motion blur, because I am shooting mostly at 1/30 and even 1/15 of a second. But I don't care. I know a lot of people do, but not me. As long as I can catch a bit of the feeling and emotion, then I am fine with the noise, the grain, and the blur.

Still, one day, in time for this year's tax returns, I will get that G11. 

A birthday party

Margie had me load the uncooked pinto beans that she had been soaking all afternoon into the car in such a way so that they would not spill, unless we hit a moose or something. We then headed to town to throw a party for Rex on his 32nd birthday.

I can hardly accept the idea that Rex is 32, for I am only slightly older than that, myself. The gap of years between us just keeps narrowing and if it continues on like this, it won't be long until my youngest son is older than me, and that will be a very strange occurrence. 

I do not believe that anything like it has ever happened before in all of history.

We arrived in Anchorage about 4:00 PM, as the sun was going down.

The party was to be at Melanie's house. I was so tired when we first arrived, that, after I hauled the beans up the stairs and into Melanie's house (she was still at work) and helped Margie rinse them off, then refill the pot and put them on the stove to boil, I laid down upon the couch and there I stayed as Margie cooked.

After about an hour or so, other people began to arrive. Lisa got onto Melanie's computer. Charlie went out into the kitchen to put his raspberry cheesecake on the counter and to melt chocolate chips. I maintained my spot on the couch, but every now and then raised my pocket camera up into the air to take a picture.

Rex and Kalib arrived at about the same time. They greeted each other robustly.

Bear Meech and Diamond watched in wonder as their house filled up with more people than they are used to seeing.

And that's Cassie, Rex's dog, the one that came with Stephanie when they got married. No, Stephanie cannot be seen in any of these pictures. Perhaps in time, I will provide the required explanation, but this is just a time to give space.

Even as Kalib played with his grandmother's phone, Melanie's land line rang. But the receiver was not about. Rex is living for awhile in Melanie's basement apartment and had taken the receiver down there. He jumped up and ran down the stairs to get it.

You guessed it - when he picked it up, he heard Kalib gibberish on the other end.

Lavina cooks the frybread. This would make it Navajo frybread. If Margie had cooked it, it would have been the same but then it would have been Apache frybread.

As for me, I maintained my position on the couch. I was really tired and lazy.

When Melanie left work, she went straight to the airport to pick up Ryan, who had flown in from Calgary to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with family and friends. Ryan and Melanie were special friends during their college days at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and spent some time in Europe together.

We all loved Ryan then and we still do, just as we love Charlie. And they are friends.

Here is Charlie's cheesecake, covered with the melted chocolate chips, which solidified into something very hard. A fork could not pierce this chocolate armor, an ordinary table knife could not cut through it.

The only way to get through the chocolate chip frosting was to saw with a serrated knife.

But... oh, was this cake good! The chocolate, the pumpkin cheese filling and the raspberries...

an absolutely magical combination!

You probably wish you could see the Navajo/Apache tacos that we made out of Lavina's frybread and Margie's beans. I should have photographed them, but I was too busy eating my share.

Ryan pets Diamond. In fact, he "overpets" Diamond.

Charlie saws his way through the chocolate on a piece of his cheesecake as Kalib jumps up and down.

After the food had been eaten, we all engaged in good conversation.

Jacob and Lavina had brought a store cake and regular birthday candles to go along with it. The candles could not be found, but someone did find these three big ones somewhere in Melanie's house. 

Kalib helped Rex blow them out.

Jacob gives his little sister some love.

As Rex unwraps presents from Jacob and Lavina, he finds the missing birthday cake candles.

Rex continues to unwrap his presents.

Soon, it was all over. Rex hugged Kalib goodbye. We all hugged each other goodbye. And then Margie, Kalib and I headed back for Wasilla, leaving Jacob and Lavina to spend the night in town with Melanie and Rex to begin a new year of life.