birthday and such

So it's my birthday! Many of you have noticed. I appreciate posts, e-mails, cards, letters, phone calls, presents, visits, fruit bats, orangautans, breakfast cereals, whatever. I love birthdays. I haven't opened cards or presents yet, but soon. As soon as I want to, basically.

You can ask me questions for my birthday, or if you're new around here, say hi and introduce yourself. That would make me happy.

So far my exciting birthday activities have included repeating the word "no" more times than any Minnesota girl should ever have to in one three hour period* and dealing with the fencing guy, who came, saw, estimated, and scheduled. Hurrah for fencing in August. I will be so glad of this fence. I took the puplet outside six times this morning. She didn't actually do anything most of those times, but she requested to go out, and we're at a stage of training where you don't ignore that request.

I was looking in the phone book for deck people, and the page heading is "Dating-Demolition." Umm. So if any of you are looking for that....

About half my friendslist has been taking a humor style quiz, and it seems to be using types without enough data. "Prankster," for example, is not just about whether your humor is clean, complex, and light; it's also about the role of other people. "The Ham," ditto: being a ham or not is about relating to other people, not those other factors. I know I should have warned you to sit down: an internet quiz, flawed in some way? Impossible! Inconceivable! I'm sorry to spring such shocking news on you. I'm not sure why this one has prompted me to say something. Mostly I just roll my eyes and move on. (Except for the quiz that told me that if I was from any race of Middle-Earth, I would be one of the Rohirrim. That one was obviously pure insightful gold.) But humor seems like it's something people aren't very good at theorizing about. (Maybe I just think that because I've read too many attempts at humorous SF that hit big-name editors right on and fell utterly flat to me, though.)

I'm going to figure out something good to have for a birthday lunch. Being as how it's my birthday and all.

*( footnote )

AKICILJ: the birthday version

I have a sudden craving, and I've had few enough food cravings lately that I really would like to go with it. I'm not sure I have the resources, though. Here's what I want: I want the kind of brownie that has the same density of plutonium. The kind with just enough flour to make them crinkly. I have recipes for mint brownies and caramel brownies and zebra brownies and peanut butter brownies and all these many things, but what I want is plutonium plain-chocolate brownies.

Can anybody help?