Neil Diamond and My Birthday, January

Today was my birthday and I was reminiscing about last year's birthday celebration.

I had gone to lunch with my girlfriend and her daughter before we drove down to the Carson River to see if we could spot the wild horses that sometimes hung out there. My friend had given me a most awesome gift, a pair of life-sized butterfly wings to wear. I put them on before we parked in the nearly empty parking lot and then we all three prepped for our stroll to the river. I wanted to take pictures of the wild mustangs that sometimes frequent that location, but on that day, on my birthday, there was only one other soul sitting at a picnic table there: a man with a karaoke machine. He was playing Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline," and as the strains of the song and his voice carried out over the valley floor, my friend, her daughter, and me with my impressively huge wing-spanned butterfly wings, danced and sang along with him, right there in the parking lot to "Sweet Caroline". I'll never forget that moment, and I'm sure the gent who was singing never dreamed he'd be performing for three lovely ladies, one of whom had beautiful, butterfly wings. Yes, "...Good times never seemed so good..."