First - here is today's picture:


And now, a story.

I gave The KingofHearts his birthday present almost a month ago: tickets to Mike Birbiglia so close that you ran the risk of being spat upon during the show. (Not that you tend to spit, Mike, I don't want to end up in your next show like the pants pressing guy, I'm just sayin' we were close. So close that if you were the type to spit - though I'm sure you're not - you could take a page from Gallagher and hand out raincoats to the first several rows. And we would have been given raincoats. That's how close we were. Great for the bulk of the show; kinda made that reenactment of throwing up on the amusement park ride a little discomforting though.)

But I digress.

I couldn't let the occasion of Daddy's actual birthday go by without a Tribute to Daddy Cake. And what more fitting tribute to Daddy than something that says who Daddy is? Call me Captain Obvious, but we went the nerdy, geek route:


For the record, I would like it noted that this was an original idea I came up with using all my own brain power. Since I normally steal all my ideas from some random, faceless person in the Interweb, you can imagine how much more disturbing it was then, that while I was Googling for images of the Periodic Table of the Elements so I could get the colors right, I found at least a dozen pictures posted by people who have made, received or eaten a Periodic Table made entirely from cupcakes. Don't you hate it when people steal your ideas before you have them? Me too.

Either way, our Periodic Table of Cupcakes was a big hit. He saw it and then for forty-five minutes, sat there pointing from cupcake to cupcake and naming all the elements on the table one by one... in fact, he sounded like this guy:



(Lyrics are here if you want to follow along.)

And then The Caterpillar got into the act and it eerily sounded like a moment from my past for a bit. But all that ended with the hilarity that is The Caterpillar trying to pronounce "aluminum."


"a-loom-num-num-num"