So last night the Finnegans Wake group was meeting at my house. We were just puzzling over this little catalog of oratorical gestures on page 407:

His handpalm lifted, his handshell cupped, his handsign pointed, his handheart mated, his handaxe risen, his handleaf fallen. Helpsome hand that holemost heals! What is het holy! It gested.

Just then Emily, who had been out of the house meeting friends, so I thought, stuck her head in the door and told me to come outside quick and see this Boston Terrier puppy that we've seen in the neighborhood once or twice. I went outside, and there was almost everyone I know, a crowd of twenty or thirty people, standing in the yard holding candles, shouting, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!"

You could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather.

More than two weeks after the actual event, in total secret, with not a glimmer of suspicion from yours truly, Emily had put together a surprise party—the second in my life (my sister surprised me for my 30th in 2000). What a treat, what a blessing. It was so much fun to have folks from all the different little worlds I participate in—Cornell, the Bookery, fellow Ithacans—mingling in our house. I'm still wearing a silly grin. Thanks to all—I'm the luckiest guy I know.

And Auberginians can thank Aaron Tieger, who has joined the heresy to the extent of agreeing to help me lay out the chapbook at long last (and by "help" I mean that he's doing all of it). With any luck, we'll have something tangible to send to contributors and elsewhere in plenty of time for Thanksgiving.