Birthday ramblings

Today’s my birthday. Woo hoo! I managed to not die again this year!

(I’m really not sure where I’m going with this post, but I figured I might as well use this occasion to write something. We’ll see if it turns out to be interesting. You’ve been warned.)

My kids came in to wish me happy birthday this morning. That was cool (though I was a little groggy at the time). My oldest was actually most excited by the totally unrelated fact that her first library card came in the mail, so now she can get books out of the library under her own name – and I can continue to pay the overdue fees.

I’m taking a vacation day today. It’s just about 9am and I’ve already checked my work email 3 times. I’m an idiot. What am I looking for? I work in the training department. When was the last time you heard of a training emergency? It’s training. A 24 hour delay isn’t going to kill you. And yet I still check my email. Idiot. I don’t answer it, though, so there’s that.

I was planning on mowing my lawn today. The weather forecast is a nice, cool day with 10% chance of rain, so it should be ideal. So as I sit here and turn my head to the left and look out the window, what do I see? Beautiful sunshine… waaaaaay out in the distance beyond the rain clouds that are dropping water like there’s no tomorrow. Lovely.

It’s now almost 4pm. I spent the morning playing games and reading with my youngest daughter before she left for Kindergarten. She managed to get me away from the computers and emails. I really should do that more often. She has a great time, and a great belly laugh.

The first game we played was Uno. My daughter gets an immense amount of fun out of dropping multiple sequential Draw 2 and Draw 4 cards on me. See the previous statement about belly laughs. So far she hasn’t developed any anger at receiving those cards either. I love being able to play without the kids copping a “not fair!” attitude. I hope that continues.

The last game we played was Clue Jr., which is almost the same as Clue except instead of a bloody murder, you’re trying to discover who ate the cake, at what time, and what they had to drink. Fun game. The most fun was how many times I had to explain it to my wife, whose blood sugar had fallen into the 40s again. It’s amazing that she can even converse at that level. She could not, however, understand the concept that the game revolves around elimination of the available options to arrive at the correct answer. Meanwhile, the 5 year old was showing everyone all the clues she discovered. I think one of them was starting to get the hang of it by the end. Not sure which one, though.

After we dropped the kid off at school, my wife and I went out for a  lunch date, which is rare. Great lunch. TGI Friday’s makes a pretty good Caesar salad. Outback does it better, mind you, but it was still good. It was all-you-can-eat, too, so of course I ate too much.

Now everyone is at their after-school Good News Club meeting, and I’m back to sitting in front of this computer. (Yes, I did check my work email again. Yes, I’m still an idiot.)

It occurs to me that you may be interested to know my thoughts on getting another year older. I couldn’t care less. Same as yesterday. I don’t feel any worse this year than last year. On the flip side, I don’t feel any better either. I don’t even feel the need to reflect back on the past year. It’s over and done with. Moving on.

Incidentally, I have the same reaction (or lack thereof) at New Year’s most of the time.

A neighbor has offered to pay me if I can get her computer running a little faster. I’m up for giving it a shot, but I have NO idea what to charge her. Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure it won’t be enough to bother claiming it on my taxes. But if I do a good job, maybe she’ll tell all her friends, and then I will own computer maintenance in this neighborhood. That would be both awesome and horrible. It’d be nice to get paid for that, but if it’s anything beyond simple stuff it can be a real pain in the neck, and I’d feel bad charging people enough to compensate me for the aggravation I’d feel.

It’s possible I’m getting ahead of myself, there.

Another 4 hours later and the kids are on their way to bed. They were very excited to give me my presents: 2 cans of Pringles, and a stick of Lebanon Bologna. They know me well. Needless to say: we had an awesome dinner.

Also I got a stick of deodorant that the kids got as a prize at Good News Club. I’m still a little confused about how a stick of men’s deodorant got into the prize box at a club for K-3rd grade, but, hey… free deodorant!

Then the kids experienced their first game of Mousetrap! tonight! We played the short version, and it still took forever. They really seemed to enjoy it, though. And what’s not to love? Well, the older one was upset when I won before she had a chance to turn the crank, but she felt better after we gave her the opportunity.

Earlier I listened to a couple of interesting interviews from NPR history: Alice Cooper and Seth MacFarlane. Both changed my conceptions of the person in question a bit – or at least widened my view. Cool stuff. I hope to blog about that in the near future.

I also caught a few recently released trailers that captured my attention – all but one of them positively. More blogging fodder for the future.

Finally, I came up with a potential idea to earn some (mostly passive) income. Likely doomed to failure, but it at least deserves a bit of research. If it pans out, I’ll let you know.

All in all, a good day.

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