Evelyn, one of Anne’s old longtime friends told her yesterday, “We are now too old to die young.” Here is a fun fact, Anne shares here birthday with rock’n’roll star Bob Seger. On our first date, I took her to see him perform at our high school, before he was famous. She was just seventeen, you know what I mean…

I feted Anne well for her birthday, if only in a bird brain sort of way. First brunch at Rooster’s. Then a lengthy stroll through Tower Grove Park. A walk only made longer by all of the birding that she wanted to do. Occasionally, our path crossed with other birders in the park, but mainly it was just the two of us and Merlin and his birds. This app listens for birds and then identifies them by their calls. With Merlin’s help we heard way more birds than we saw. I was amazed by the variety that it found. So much so that I eventually downloaded it myself. Employing it, the app quickly found the Tennessee warbler, but playing back its call, all I heard was the siren of a passing ambulance. Still, Anne likes the app.

Rounding out her day, I fixed salmon fettuccine for dinner. She had quite the nice birthday, if I do say so myself. Somewhere in there she got some presents too, books and clothes, with more yet to be delivered, but then there is always Mother’s Day. Eventually falling asleep, with my head on my pillow, I thought to myself that I had done OK by her. Drifting off to dreamland, I was rudely awakened at 4:30 in the morning by the tornado siren. Checking my phone, I saw that there was a warning box nearby, but it was not aimed right at us. We had time. I turned on the TV, where the third-string weathermen were doing their usual storm-warning rain dance. The main problem was that the suspected tornado was passing over the radar itself, distorting the returns and making it difficult to see. Anyway, the warning dissipated by five and I went back to bed.