Robert's 1/3 of a Century Birthday Party
He's big. He's old. He's a repeating decimal.
Robert
always gets the short end of the stick when it comes to birthday parties,
in part because he doesn't make a big fuss and demand them like some people,
and in part because his birthday is so close to Christmas that he's just used
to not celebrating it with more than a dinner out or the equivalent. But this
May Robert turned 33.333333333--a whole third of a century! When you start
measuring life in terms of nontrivial fractions of centuries, then, in my
book, you're old. Ancient. Prehistoric, even, some might say. . .
This
entire line of thinking led to a dinosaur-themed third of a century party
for Robert on Saturday, May 6. He grilled dinosaur-sized beef ribs and 1/3
of a meter-long hot dogs. We had two big salads. We had big--truly dinosaur-sized--jugs
of ketchup and mustard (from that Costco trip a few weeks ago). We had a biiiiiiiiiig
can--they call it a keg--of Virgil's root beer. We had dinosaur-shaped cookies
(pictured above--both on a platter and then one as Chris likes to eat it,
with a healthy side of whipped cream), Robert's favorite angel food cake with
two kinds of homemade ice cream, three cheesecakes divided into thirds (each
third a different flavor), and a watermelon (it's big).
Decorations
included 33 records strewn around the table and used as cake-servers, dinosaur
posters, glow-in-the-dark dinosaur items (a rubber light-up dinosaur and a
puzzle) adorning the bathroom, and large and small cardboard dinosaur models
around the buffet table. There was also a not-to-scale timeline on the floor,
going from the present 333 years into the future and then 3.3 billion years
into the past, with important events (Bayes's birth, dinosaur extinctions,
the Vulcans' achievement of warp) marked clearly. There was also a length
chart (dinosaurs are measured in length, not height, because they tended not
really to stand upright) on the door for people to see whether they were the
length of a t. rex skull or a brachiasaurus thighbone or a velociraptor or
an apatosaurus egg.
Robert was given "The Naked Gun 33.3," an excellent gift choice if I ever saw one, as well as a cool LED flashlight and olive pitter (wrapped in dinosaur-stickered paper), a "How to Survive a Robot Uprising" book in order to see him through the next two-thirds of a century, and a very big board game (no one knew Warcraft had a board game--intriguing!).
We
had both the movies "Big" and "Jurassic Park" to watch,
and we saw "Big" but held off on "Jurassic Park" because
Robert finds it a trifle scary. Meanwhile, guests got to take part in two
exciting party-games: find the four dinosaur magnets stuck to various magnetic
surfaces around the house (Lise, who must have the eyes of a troodon--an extremely
sharp-sighted dinosaur who could even hunt at night--won a fuzzy dinosaur
pen for that challenge) and make the best origami dinosaur (using directions
from a book or winging it, either way--Debbie, who must have the long, flexible
fingers and fine motor control of another dinosaur, won a different fuzzy
dinosaur pen for that challenge). If I'd thought about it, we also would have
hidden foil-wrapped Cadbury "dinosaur" eggs around the house for
fun and chocolate. (Nothing beats finding out you've just sat on a chocolate
egg, after all.)
All in all, it was a cool, lovely, breezy afternoon and evening on the roof for grilling and eating, and everyone had a great time. Below, from left to right, you see Carlos, Sandra, Olivia, and a dinosaur posing just before they left; Carlos measuring Olivia and showing her to be squarely in the saltopus size-range, and me and Bob, eating giant beef ribs. Happy 33.3333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333..., Robert!
