Forty-nine

That's the number of years I have been in this world. Today is my birthday. A friend wrote to remind me that since it is the longest day of the year, I have even more time to enjoy it.

Tom and I just got home from a walk in the Nob Hill neighborhood of Portland, after a nice lunch at Wildwood Restaurant (I ate too much, but it was good—especially the strawberry shortcake.) In an earlier life, when I really loved to shop, this would have been a great shopping trip because, with a couple of exceptions, all the shops were small and local.

Now, one of the advantages of a June birthday is that there are three birthstones: pearl, moonstone, and alexandrite. On one of our first of many walks to come, Tom told me he thought I should have a new ring for our 25th anniversary in August. I'm really not a big jewelry girl, but he'd planted the idea, so off I went looking at rings on the internet. The diamonds didn't really appeal to me, but the thought came into my head that it would be different to have an alexandrite. I figured we'd be looking for a long while to find something since it's not a stone that everyone knows, much less has in their collection. I was wrong. Dyke Vandenburgh Jewelers had a ring on their site (and still do in their gallery) that was just what I had in my head. Thus, the anniversary ring became a birthday AND anniversary ring.

I've actually been enjoying my gift for a while, but thought I'd wait till June to share the story of my alexandrite. The wonder of the stone is that it changes colors in different lights. A professional photographer, I'm not, so I couldn't quite capture the brilliant color differences as well as I'd like, but here's a look. On the left it's purply-red in indoor lighting. On the right it's more of a blue-green in natural light.
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