Today is my birthday.

I was born on this date in 1943.

Damn! That was a long time ago.

Fifty-seven years. At this rate, in another ten or twenty years, I'll definitely have to consider myself to be approaching early middle age.

How I Spent My 57th Birthday:

• Slept in a little bit but still got up around seven a.m. for usual feed the cat, make the coffee, etc. activities.
• I logged on to check e-mail and look at a few online journals (for example Bev Sykes' adventures in Washington). I finally posted the Take Our Daughters to Work entry I'd written Thursday night but hadn't linked into my journal entry list page and my main (index) page. And I started this entry, getting as far as the line about "approaching early middle age" and saved it.
• Nancy was baking my birthday cake (Boston cream pie). She looked at me and said (I swear) "How about a cookie." I was confused. Cookie? She had just taken the cake out of the oven but I hadn't seen her baking any cookies. Since I was seated at the computer could she be talking about browsers and cookies? I had been talking to her about logs and counters and such. She burst out laughing. "I didn't say cookie; I said quickie!" Oh. Ah... Yes! *grin*
• And it turns out that later on she also baked some delicious biscotti.
• I always go for a run on my birthday. Well, for the past 18 years I've been running with varying degrees of dedication and seriousness -- this year I've done the least running and the least amount of working out in all of that time and it shows in my weight -- but I always run on my birthday. Usually I like to do five miles on my birthday. But... not this year... this morning my left knee hurt... not the kneecap but the back of the knee... I was limping around the house... so I went out and did some errands instead... my knee felt better and there were patches of blue here and there in the clouds... a taste of sunshine following day after day of cold and rain... maybe I will run afterall, but when I was going upstairs to change into running stuff my knee began hurting again... Best to let it take the day off... I've signed up to run in a five kilometer race next Saturday so maybe I'll rest my knee today and try to enjoy today without pain.
• Dinner at my mother-in-law's house. One of Nancy's sisters was there along with her husband and their son who shares my first name and my birthday. So we had two birthdays and two birthday cakes. (Except he just turned ten years old today.) Adding in another sister and her family meant there were about a dozen of us there altogether. Very pleasant. (Most weekends we have an extended family meal; I enjoy them very much.)
• After dinner we went to see my 5th grade niece in a middle school performance of The Wizard of Oz. Although two teachers served as directors and advisors (and the costumes were borrowed from the high school drama club in another school district), everything else was done by the kids, including set construction, sound (including the use of wireless microphones), lighting, etc.
• Stopped on the way home to pick up pictures I'd taken in Pittsburgh. You wouldn't be interested in various shots of downtown Pittsburgh, nor probably not in the Easter egg decorating session also recorded on that roll of film, but there's a picture of me and Emily and one of Emily and her boyfriend Paul. I'll have to scan them and put them up somewhere around here (I don't think she and Paul would mind, but I'll have to check first).
• Sean and Jennifer got home shortly after Nancy and I did, so we then had the opening of family presents -- Jennifer, having noted the proliferation of Dilbert cartoons when she visited my office bought me a Dilbert figure for my cube -- Sean hand crafted a keychain holder using hemp twine (don't know where he picks up these various talents but he's busy making things for everyone in sight; it's actually cool looking) -- and Nancy got me a fantastic set of pots and pans, heavy weight stuff with non stick coating, including a dutch oven, something I've wanted for ages.
• Then the kids went on line doing who-knows-what, online chat and downloading stuff and whatever... while Nancy and I watched The Sixth Sense (Sean had seen it and Jennifer doesn't like scary movies). We did like the movie -- and that kid was excellent -- but why was that considered such a surprise twist ending? Nancy and I knew that there was supposed to be a twist ending and we had both managed to avoid learning about it in advance -- but about fifteen minutes into the film I told her that I was afraid that I had figured out the secret and she laughed and said that she thought she had figured it out as well. Okay, I can understand some people not getting it but the video we rented had a whole thing at the end with the director, etc. talking about how they had hidden clues, etc. as if this were some really arcane and obscure thing. Duh... Well, we did enjoy it.
• And that has been my birthday.

Coming up in less than two weeks... Jennifer's 18th birthday followed quickly by Sean's 15th birthday. Yes, a Taurus collection.

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