Happy birthday to James!!

He's gonna be soo mad when he sees this ... !! :-D

James, do you remember my cunning plan that I texted you about when I was in Egypt? Or my nefarious scheme or whatever it was I called it? Here it is ... ! ;-) I'm sorry, I really am, but I just couldn't possibly resist once I got the idea. What is this blog good for if I can't use it to annoy and (hopefully) vaguely flatter my friends?? ;-)

OK! So, the rest of you: today is my friend James' birthday. You may have seen him around the blog posting various anti-Keanu comments. ;-) He's, umm ... 28? Thereabouts, anyway. (That sounds bad, but he didn't remember how old I was on the 14th, either, so now we're even. ;-) Congratulations!! We've been friends for a long time now - for about a dozen years, unless I'm much mistaken - and although we've been through some ups and downs in our friendship, it's lasted all these years. I am so grateful for that, I really appreciate our friendship so much. James, I hope you've had a good day today. :-) Your present's not in the mail quite yet, but it will be soon. :-)

Anyway ... so far this isn't too bad, right? Well, let's get down to business. ;-) I used to always pester James about getting a cell phone, and he swore up and down that he never would. But guess what, in the end he broke down and got one. (I'm sure I wasn't the only one bugging him about it, but I like to think that I played some small part in this small defection from his normally fiercely neo-Luddite stance. :-) Now I'm thinking that I want him to start a blog. He swears up and down that he never will. But, well, who knows what the future holds. ;-) Anyone who wants to do their bit in helping me bug him about it, post a comment and tell him to start up that blog!! :-D (He already registered on Blogger, so, well, make what you want of that. ;-)

He claims he doesn't know what he'd blog about. I know! A chronicle of his incredibly bad luck would probably be really entertaining to read and also helpful to him because it'd give him a great place to vent. (And I'd have the perfect place to keep up with everything he gets up to. ;-) But if that doesn't sound appealing, he should let himself be inspired by my v. regular reader Paz and use the blog as a place to share all the great photos he's taken ... and, I'm sure, will continue to take. James travels a lot in Japan, and he's taken soo many wonderful pictures there. Why not share it with the world?? Since he won't, I will!! :-D

Take a look at these ...

From Kumamoto:

From Kyoto:

From Fukuoka:

From Nara:

This one is from Nara too. It's my favorite, I think, of all the pictures he's sent me. I would have loved to have been there and seen this. :-)

And finally, here's a picture of the man himself. I took this when I was in England visiting him in November two years ago.

He doesn't like having his picture taken ... !! Can you tell?? :-D

I think these pictures are wonderful - and there are lots more of them, you can see a bunch more of them here - and he should absolutely have some kind of website where he could share them and his stories of his travels. James: I won't quit nagging you about it, you know I won't ... ;-)

Anyway! He may think this is horrible and awful but I'm posting this with only respect and affection. I did warn him that he'd get a birthday surprise. ;-) I think this is a nice surprise, so there. Thanks for reading and checking out the pictures. Now get nagging ... !!!