Thirty-four.
As of April 25th, that's my age. To all my friends who've yet to reach that milestone, I highly recommend it. Seriously, thirty-four is so much cooler than thirty-three. I'm not exactly sure why, either.
The day in question was quite nice, thank you. Nothing big. Went to work, as usual. My brother had told his class that it was my birthday, so I got a bunch of well wishes from four year olds. Some of the twos and threes picked up on it, too. I'd hoped to get off early, but a swing broke on the playground and I'm still in charge of those kinds of things. I think I ticked my boss off a little. She was really agitated that it broke while in use, I guess sending a child for a sudden, if brief, flight. For my part, I was non-plussed. "That's how you know it's broken." I think I actually uttered that at some point. And it's true. It's not like there's any outward indication that the internal structure of the metal has weakened to the point of failure. That's why they call it "internal". You don't know it's going to break until you go to tell the kid not to jump out of the swing and realize the swing jumped out of the kid. Really, I'm not as heartless as I probably sound. It's just that's it's happened before, there's very little chance for injury in the situation, and in fact the child was completely unharmed, and I was a little put off at the idea that somehow I'd failed to properly "check" the swings to prevent this from happening. Again, "internal".
Anyway, brother and sis-in-law and mom and me all get together for mom's stellar spaghetti casserole, cake, and all around good times. I'd kind of wanted to just not do anything at all, but decided not to be a prig about it. I was just kind of moody in the days leading up to the birthday. Not even because of the birthday, just in general. I'm glad I relented, because I had a good time. I don't see my sister-in-law much anymore since she no longer works at the center.
It wasn't the highlight of the festivities, by any means, but I should point out that there were goodies of the presents type. I got some cash that I quickly used for some wrestling dvds. I got the second season dvd set of The Greatest American Hero. That would have been stellar, except I recently found out that the great cover songs from the series weren't included in the second season. That especially sucks since my all-time favorite episode completely revolved around the Barry Maguire classic "Eve of Destruction". The aliens play it for Ralph to warn him of impending disaster and it plays throughout the episode. Not paying for that song was a really bad move, and I'm a little surprised they didn't realize that. Still, I'm glad I've got it. I also scored DOOM3 for my XBox. It's the collectors edition, so it includes the original Ultimate Doom and Doom II. It's a really nice package. The game, as games tend to be for me nowadays, is kind of tough. I'm just slowing down. I'm at a baseball pace and it's at a basketball pace. I want to stop and putter around. Look at stuff, have a decent idea where I am, where I'm supposed to go, and how to get there. It wants me to run around with lights flashing and sirens and screams filling the air and nasty things quickly coming out of the shadows after me. That's another thing. I miss games where I can see what's going on. It seems like ever since they figured out they could do cool things with lighting effects they throw them in as much as they can, wherever they can. For my part, I think it's a shame they create such a wonderfully large and detailed world and then keep you from actually seeing it.
One last word on the birthday. It was the neatest little surprise. I was always a huge fan of The Wild, Wild West when I was growing up. I used to watch it on weekday afternoons with my dad. I got tired of waiting for season sets, so I bit the bullet and have been getting dvds from Columbia. Every 4-6 weeks they charge me thirty bucks and send me two dvds with three episodes on each. I'm around a third of the way through season two. I figure I'll have all four seasons sometime next year. It'll have cost me something like five hundred bucks over two years when it's all said and done, but it's worth it to me.
Anyway, I had a package from Columbia waiting for me when I left for work on Monday. It was my monthly Wild, Wild West fix, and even had one of my all-time favorite episodes, the very first episode I ever saw. It's sentimental. It's pseudo-mysticism, but I appreciated the coincidence of something I have so strongly associated with my dad showing up on my birthday. It's like God's little way of telling me that he (and He) was there with me for my birthday. Even accepting it for the coincidence it was, it was a nice moment that I cherished through the day.
The day in question was quite nice, thank you. Nothing big. Went to work, as usual. My brother had told his class that it was my birthday, so I got a bunch of well wishes from four year olds. Some of the twos and threes picked up on it, too. I'd hoped to get off early, but a swing broke on the playground and I'm still in charge of those kinds of things. I think I ticked my boss off a little. She was really agitated that it broke while in use, I guess sending a child for a sudden, if brief, flight. For my part, I was non-plussed. "That's how you know it's broken." I think I actually uttered that at some point. And it's true. It's not like there's any outward indication that the internal structure of the metal has weakened to the point of failure. That's why they call it "internal". You don't know it's going to break until you go to tell the kid not to jump out of the swing and realize the swing jumped out of the kid. Really, I'm not as heartless as I probably sound. It's just that's it's happened before, there's very little chance for injury in the situation, and in fact the child was completely unharmed, and I was a little put off at the idea that somehow I'd failed to properly "check" the swings to prevent this from happening. Again, "internal".
Anyway, brother and sis-in-law and mom and me all get together for mom's stellar spaghetti casserole, cake, and all around good times. I'd kind of wanted to just not do anything at all, but decided not to be a prig about it. I was just kind of moody in the days leading up to the birthday. Not even because of the birthday, just in general. I'm glad I relented, because I had a good time. I don't see my sister-in-law much anymore since she no longer works at the center.
It wasn't the highlight of the festivities, by any means, but I should point out that there were goodies of the presents type. I got some cash that I quickly used for some wrestling dvds. I got the second season dvd set of The Greatest American Hero. That would have been stellar, except I recently found out that the great cover songs from the series weren't included in the second season. That especially sucks since my all-time favorite episode completely revolved around the Barry Maguire classic "Eve of Destruction". The aliens play it for Ralph to warn him of impending disaster and it plays throughout the episode. Not paying for that song was a really bad move, and I'm a little surprised they didn't realize that. Still, I'm glad I've got it. I also scored DOOM3 for my XBox. It's the collectors edition, so it includes the original Ultimate Doom and Doom II. It's a really nice package. The game, as games tend to be for me nowadays, is kind of tough. I'm just slowing down. I'm at a baseball pace and it's at a basketball pace. I want to stop and putter around. Look at stuff, have a decent idea where I am, where I'm supposed to go, and how to get there. It wants me to run around with lights flashing and sirens and screams filling the air and nasty things quickly coming out of the shadows after me. That's another thing. I miss games where I can see what's going on. It seems like ever since they figured out they could do cool things with lighting effects they throw them in as much as they can, wherever they can. For my part, I think it's a shame they create such a wonderfully large and detailed world and then keep you from actually seeing it.
One last word on the birthday. It was the neatest little surprise. I was always a huge fan of The Wild, Wild West when I was growing up. I used to watch it on weekday afternoons with my dad. I got tired of waiting for season sets, so I bit the bullet and have been getting dvds from Columbia. Every 4-6 weeks they charge me thirty bucks and send me two dvds with three episodes on each. I'm around a third of the way through season two. I figure I'll have all four seasons sometime next year. It'll have cost me something like five hundred bucks over two years when it's all said and done, but it's worth it to me.
Anyway, I had a package from Columbia waiting for me when I left for work on Monday. It was my monthly Wild, Wild West fix, and even had one of my all-time favorite episodes, the very first episode I ever saw. It's sentimental. It's pseudo-mysticism, but I appreciated the coincidence of something I have so strongly associated with my dad showing up on my birthday. It's like God's little way of telling me that he (and He) was there with me for my birthday. Even accepting it for the coincidence it was, it was a nice moment that I cherished through the day.
posted by David Worrell @ 7:25 PM
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