Two Weeks Until My Birthday! (Don't Go Sayin' You Didn't Have Enough Notice!)

Check it out: I'm 43 years and 50 weeks old today!

Or, I would be, if there were exactly 52 weeks in a year. Go divide 365 by 7 and see if you get a remainder.

Go ahead, I'll wait.

(There's a calculator in the Accessories folder if you're using Windows.)

Okay, back?

So, yeah, I'm roughly 43 years and 50 weeks old today.

I plan my own birthday party. This is sometimes considered rude and/or pathetic. Also, maybe a bit self-centered or something. If Casey'd ever come to Kansas City for the event, I could pretend it was really a party for him.

Anyway, I want to have a party for it, so I do. I like having people around, and on my birthday I am supposed to get what I want. That's a law or something, right?

Having a birthday so close after Christmas (but not super-close like some people have, mind you) does stink a bit. It makes it hard to remember what was a Christmas gift and what was a birthday gift when I was a kid.

But here's some random birthday memories for you:

When I was in elementary school, before everyone started to sing "Happy Birthday to You," I wanted to know if I was "allowed" to sing along--but nobody would wait for me to ask before they started singing, so I got all upset and cried about it. And then I had to feel super-foolish explaining the stupid reason why I was crying, knowing how foolish it sounded as the words came out of my mouth.

My senior year of high school, Brad Graham collected money from a bunch of my friends and classmates and got me my first computer mouse for my Apple //c for my eighteenth birthday. I still have the "card" that came with it, with all the names on it... or I should, anyway. I had it before the move, anyway.

T.K. arranged a surprise birthday party for my 26th birthday--at least, I think that was the birthday. I remember the candles on the cake were off by a year. I think that might have been the last birthday party someone else arranged for me--but I could be forgetting one.

In junior high (7th grade, I think) I got one of those bowl-like sled things. I loved that thing. Too bad we didn't leave near some really great hills.

I don't remember a lot about birthdays at school (beyond the mouse story mentioned above). That seems odd, as you'd think days like that would stick out. I remember other kids' birthdays. I remember in third grade Mary Harris brought some sort of cake or brownie-like thing, and it had a toothpick with an American flag on it in the middle, and Mary said whoever got that piece got an extra piece--and she so arranged it so I got that one. I remember thinking she was very obvious about it.

But that wasn't my birthday, so pretend I didn't mention it. Or remember it as an example of how I remember things about other kids' birthdays during school, but not much about mine.

Anyway, I'm two weeks away from staring my forty-fifth year. In 54 weeks (and a day) I'll have lived the same amount of time as I'd lived on my 15th birthday three times over!

Seriously, I'm the same age as three fifteen-year-olds, but lined up instead of all together.

I'm too old to be up this late. Good night.