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A little after 6 pm Thursday night, Cristina, Jacqueline, José-Luis, Meiyu, little Christina, Ryan, Stephanie, Toby and Yoonie infiltrated Alex's office and began work to transform this ordinary office into a spaceship-like captain's quarters.  The first step was to begin foiling up all the contents of the room with trusty ol' bulk-sized boxes of Al foil (what better substance for "Al" Brown!).  In the meantime, another crew was working on the posters in the outer office to put up on every floor of the Chemistry building.  After the foiling, we put green cellophane on the ceiling lights to enhance the ambiance of the space shi...er...office.  Because the theme of the decorations was "you are never too old to play", we strewed toys all over the place, on the tables, on the shelves, in the drawers, etc.  We hope that Alex will spend countless hours playing with them.  Lastly, we had to add party favours, so in went the ribbons, balloons, foam and sparkles.  Preparations were complete at around 11 pm.

For the first time in Brown group history, all group members arrived on campus early in the morning, but unfortunately, this time, Alex came late.  Our audio-visual equipment and battery-powered goodies needed to be turned on, so we had to wait till the last minute to activate them.  While biting our nails for nearly two hours, Alex leisurely arrived a little before 9:45 am.

The official members of the Brown group would like to thank those we lassoed in to help us with the decorating of the office (including our visiting postdoc, Cristina, who we don't think trashing your new boss' office was part of the job description).  Thanks to P.-N. for inspiration.  Special thanks go to Gabe and Christine, who without their help, this wouldn't have been possible.

Happy 40^th Birthday, Alex!

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