How I celebrated my birthday (after the show ended)

You already know that on Friday I celebrated my 56th birthday by working on "Sunrise" as usual, where my colleagues got all the contestants for Miss Hawaii to sing "Happy Birthday" to me. But you don't know yet what happened to me after that. The Kona-Kohala Chamber of Commerce had invited me to keynote its annual meeting. I originally demurred on the grounds that Bernadette probably had something planned for me on my birthday. But they sweetened the pot with an offer for both of us to stay at the Four Seasons Hualalai. I'm not impressed by many-star resorts (I don't golf or get spa treatments so what's the point?) but I am impressed by nice people and the people at Hualalai are very nice, Old Hawaii nice. So I agreed. Then my father said he was flying out to visit. Now, my dad is 90 and deaf as a post, but he's still got all his marbles and we're close. So I decided to chip in some of my own money and bring him along. I told the chamber so they could let Dad see me give a speech. They were so great about it. And they bought me a birthday cake hat! We were cutting it close, getting from work to the airport and from Kona airport to the luncheon. So the chamber decided to send a car for us, then take me back to the airport later to get the rental car I had reserved. That's when my luck changed. My driver's license expired on my birthday! Looking back, I think they ought to have rented me a car for a few hours to drive to the local motor vehicle office to renew the license - one assumes the expiration happened at the end of June 26 rather than the beginning - but it didn't occur to me to ask. I was too flabbergasted. But the nice lady behind the counter suggested I work the phones and get them to fax over a temporary extension. "We do it for California tourists all the time," she said. The Dillingham office where I got my license clicked straight over to recorded music. Ala Moana satellite city hall was a busy signal every time I called. I tried another satellite office but no one answered. Finally I called the mayor's office, which answered right away and gave me customer service, which called me back fast and got me through to Ala Moana, where they said I did not have to call the Dillingham office, it would be okay to work through the office in Kona. I called that office and got an answer right away, from a nice lady who said Hawaii doesn't do faxed extensions, and the office was closing in 15 minutes, but if I came in Monday they could easily handle the renewal. Monday! If I had been smart enough to call the Kona office first, I would have had enough time to renew the license. Instead I wasted an hour making more than two dozen calls to people who didn't answer the phone or couldn't help. There was nothing for me to do but call a cab and slink back to the hotel. On the way back I told the whole story to the cabbie. "What a coincidence," he said. "What do you mean?" I asked. "The same thing happened to me once when I flew to Oahu for my birthday," he said. [Postscript: I renewed my license Monday at the Dillingham motor vehicle office and everybody was really professional and nice. These are people facing mandatory furlough days, mind you, and yet the line moved quickly. I cannot praise that behavior enough. HMD]