Happy Birthday Julie

I was going to post about some Mexican embroideries my Grandma did long ago, but they'll have to wait because the irresistible aroma of molasses cookies is wafting through the house.

My oldest dear friend Julie is turning 40 tomorrow. These are her favorite cookies. Well... I don't know that for sure, but she likes it when I bake them. We've been friends since the 6th grade. Back then, we were in the band together, but she was much better than me and eventually made it into the jazz band. They made her play jazz french horn, so she didn't get much experience. We quadruple dated to the prom. 20 years later, she married her date, and I was escorted down the aisle with my prom date who stood up for her husband.

Back in junior high, we used to take the train into Evanston with our friend Nancy and go to inappropriate R-rated movies (and *gasp* unrated ones too) at the now closed Varsity Theater. I always told my mom we saw James Bond pictures when we really watched things like A Clockwork Orange and David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth. Truth is that I didn't understand those films at that age anyway.

More recently, we took Roger Ebert's film class through the University of Chicago. This was before Roger's illness and we watched all of Buster Keaton's hilarious silent films. Roger Ebert had a way of ruining all the gags by explaining them before we watched them, but it was really fun. We signed up the next year, when it was going to be all about the French New Wave cinema. Roger Ebert got sick and we had a substitute teacher who switched the syllabus so every week, it was another film with a depressing French death...

So tonight it's dinner at a French cafe with our old friends from high school and bowling afterwards. I love bowling... and French Cafes...and of course, old friends..

Happy Birthday, Julie! You ROCK!