Happy Birthday Christina!

My friend in Hawaii (living the dream!) is celebrating her birthday. It is never polite to ask [nor post] a lady’s age so you’ll have to ask her yourself if you want to know. Christina is a fellow Leo yet has the great luck of happenstance to have the same birthdate as Bugs Bunny. She is another friend I made and have stayed in touch with since the DG days [see Happy Birthday Rad]. At DG, Christina’s talents were not with computers but with languages, namely her fluency with Spanish and French. Someone being from our part of Illinois and becoming completely fluent in any language other than English is an incredible accomplishment. Central Illinois doesn’t have pockets of Latin Americans or Quebecois to practice with which means one has to have talent, persistence and most importantly, discipline. 
 
To bolster my French, we would go to lunch once a week at a place called the Penguin Cafe [in Peoria]. Always enjoyable, even if the bulk of the time it was in English. When I left for Austin, I stayed in touch and wrote as much as I could to Christina in improved French I had acquired at ACC. We also started a tradition we’ve always continued to this day, buying each other a birthday lunch; we send each other a check to cover it. I think I finally upped the amount of lunch money due to inflation and the cost of living rising in Hawaii. The other part of the tradition involves our mutual zodiac sign, Leo the Lion. I am constantly on the hunt for toys, cards, clothes or various trinkets with a lion on it. One year it was a Playmobil pride of lions for their zoo series. Another time it was a beanie baby. This year has definitely become my favorite thanks to some help from my in-laws and their Build-a-Bear habit. They found a lion with a grass-skirt/Hawaiian costume. Nothing could be more perfect in my opinion. I threw in some Madagascar masks of the lion character so no one would feel ignored. Christina loved it in a recent e-mail. The hula lion is there on her desk at work. Now to conjure up next year.