Birthday celebration

 Jose texted me to come over to their boat to celebrate my birthday.  As I was about to open a bottle of wine, I thought this was a pretty good idea.  So I hopped down into the dinghy and bailed out the five inches or so of rainwater.  Meanwhile, the rain let up somewhat.

I had been listening to music videos that afternoon and had stumbled across an old one of Peter, Paul, and Mary doing a version of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face."  You will remember it from the Roberta Flack version in the early 70s.  But Peter Yarrow introduced it as being written by a Scotsman named Ewan MacColl.  (It's available on YouTube.  It's a beautiful version.)  Jeff starts to tell the story about how he met Ewan MacColl in Scotland, hung out with the Incredible String Band (who played Woodstock) and assorted other bits of folklore.  Eventually he wound up telling stories about his time as a veterinarian in LA.

"Did I ever tell you the story about when I set Dean Martin's dog on fire?"  Wait.  Full stop.  THE Dean Martin?  "Yes, and he still owes me $800"  And he proceeded to tell the story:  Dean Martin was a client of Jeff's in LA (as were a number of celebrities.)  Dean was not used to being treated like a normal customer, having to make appointments, etc., and roared in one day; his standard poodle had warts.  Bad ones.  Big enough that the groomer had sliced through one that morning and told Dean he had to take the dog to a vet.  So Jeff and co. take the dog back to the exam room, leaving Mr. Martin stewing in the waiting room with the rest of the vast unwashed.

They marked off all the warts and shaved the hair around them.  The tool they used to remove the warts was sort of like a pincers that was electrically heated.  (I think I have that right - electrically heated is the important part.)  One of the techs had washed each of the warts with alcohol to sterilize the area and called for Jeff.  Jeff comes in, removes one wart, goes to cauterize the wound with the tool and woosh!  - up goes the dog in flames.  So they put the fire out, removed the rest of the warts and then Jeff went to confront Mr. Martin.  Dean Martin thought it was hysterical that his dog caught fire.  And apparently was telling this story on the cocktail circuit for some time.

So I dutifully called bullshit on this story.  Jose turns to me and verified it, saying she heard it from other sources who were present.  Ok, I believe it.  No reason now not to.  I'm trying to get Jeff to write down his stories for posterity.  Trouble is, most of them involve personalities that anyone younger than me won't relate to.

Jose served up yummy spaghetti carbonara for dinner.  We had scotch to close out the night.  Hard to beat a birthday celebration in Fiji.