Jeannette Penman was dressed to the nines this afternoon in the front room of the Elyria Township home she shares with her daughter and son-in-law.

And nines were pretty much the theme of her big day today.

People around the world marked 9/9/09 — the last in a series of single-digit repeating days — in a variety of ways. Penman, though, said she planned to spend a quiet day with two more nines — it’s her 99th birthday.

Her plans include waiting for a call from her granddaughter and her husband, who live in France. She celebrated on Sunday with a small family get-together — dinner, ice cream and cake.

Her family plans to reserve the real party for 100, and it’s clear talking to Penman she’s got a few more birthdays to come.

“She’s very aware of things, still takes care of herself and helps my mother,” said granddaughter Debbie McFetridge, who lives in Ormand Beach, Fla. “She’s not one these that just sits there.”

Penman said she gets around well. She uses a cane and has a walker “just in case” but rarely uses it. She never had surgery till she was 85 and even still has her tonsils.

She’s been independent her whole life, she said. She learned to drive a car at age 12, and drove until she had that surgery 14 years ago.

She was the youngest of eight kids and has outlived all her siblings. She had two daughters, and lost one in 1947 when she was hit by a car at eight years old.

“It’s still tough,” said daughter Beverly Pandy. “You go on, but you never get over it.”

Penman has two granddaughters, six great-grandchildren and a great-great-grandchild.

She was born in Norwalk and as a girl lived in Iowa — where her dad, a minister, went to serve a church — and has traveled quite a bit. She worked as a sales clerk in downtown Elyria and in medical records at Elyria Memorial Hospital.

Her secret to longevity?

She’s never smoked, she said, and she “takes a little glass of wine once in a while.”

She’s seen a lot of things come about in her lifetime, she said. She recalls growing up in Iowa without indoor plumbing, yet she celebrated 99 in the most modern of ways — on a Skype video chat with McFetridge and her family singing “Happy Birthday” from Florida.

And for 100 next year?

“There’ll be fireworks at that one,” laughed Pandy.

Elsewhere, 9/9/09 proved to be popular for Las Vegas wedding chapels.

Wedding officials in Sin City were preparing Wednesday for one of the busiest days of the year because of the quirky date.

Jessica Skrutvold of Las Vegas told the Associated Press she and her husband-to-be Chad Lyons were expecting nine guests for their 9 p.m. wedding, which coincidentally celebrates her favorite number.

“The easiest day for my poor memory to remember was 9-9-09, and we’ve been doing everything last minute ever since,” said the 31-year-old.

In Britain, where 999 is the emergency call number, the date has sparked a wedding rush, according to the BBC, and is predicted to be especially popular for emergency service workers.

Couples in China were even more eager to tie the knot. The Chinese word for “nine” sounds similar to the word for “forever.”

200 couples were married in a mass ceremony at the Thean Hou temple in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The movie “9,” a computer-animated fantasy about life after the apocalypse, has pegged its opening to 9/9/09 while restaurants dotted across the United States are offering special meal deals for $99 or, for recession-hit wallets, $9.09, Reuters reported.

Urlesque.com played off cats’ nine lives, issuing a call that 9/9/09 be “A Day Without Cats on the Internet” to protest the quantity of cute cat photos and videos online. “We can all agree that cats need a break,” the site’s editor said in a statement.

Only Japan wasn’t getting in on the fun.

In Japanese the word for nine is pronounced like the word for agony or torture and is considered very unlucky, second only to four, which sounds like death, Reuters reported.

Some Japanese hospitals don’t have these numbers as room numbers or even floor numbers and All Nippon Airways omits rows four, nine and 13 from its planes, according to travel websites.

Contact Rona Proudfoot at 329-7124 or rproudfoot@chroniclet.com.