Happy Birthday, Katie-Bar-The-Door

It's Katie-Bar-The-Door's birthday. She's not only taking the day off, she's taking the rest of the week (plus Labor Day), so in all likelihood, no blogging until Tuesday. (Not that I've done much blogging in the past couple of weeks; lots of good reasons, but I won't bore you with the details.)

You know, I often talk about Katie-Bar-The-Door, for whom the all-important Katie Awards are named, but I don't know that I've ever described her. At her office, people sometimes see her as a combination of Ellen Ripley and the Terminator, only better dressed. Maybe like Kyra Sedgwick on The Closer.

Scary.

But when the big cheeses need someone to bring order out of chaos, or when her co-workers need someone to speak truth to power, Katie's the one they call on.

"Release the Kraken!" is how Katie cheerfully puts it.

"She very politely pretends to work for me," the owner of the company says, "but we both know who the boss really is."

At home, though, I see a different side of Katie-Bar-The-Door, and in terms of movie references you might know, this is how I would describe her:

The red hair and fiery temperament of Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man

the loyalty and compatibility of Katharine Hepburn in Holiday

the humor and easy companionship of Myrna Loy in The Thin Man series (we even have a dog!)

the wit and resourcefulness of Diana Rigg in The Avengers

and the smarts of Irene Dunne in, well, everything.

In short, she's the ultimate Hawksian woman.

Which makes me a very lucky man indeed. Happy birthday, Katie-Bar-The-Door!