Skip to main content
Saturday, Nov. 1, 2003



Ahhh, my birthday.



It's that one day when I feel really special. Probably because I have a family that loves me so much and they let me be a lounger on my birthday. Julie, in particular, is very big on letting a birthday person have the day off.



We started the day with pancakes and then went to see a film called "Good Boy" which was aimed directly at Sophie's age. Jake wouldn't sit still for more than 10 minutes and Julie spent the rest of the movie walking around with him throughout the movie theater. Soph seemed to enjoy the movie (it's about talking dogs from outer space. That's VERY general, but you get the idea).



Didn't run for the second day in a row. I decided to take the entire weekend off and let my body get some extra rest. I've talked about feeling like I'm hitting a wall, and so I decided this was the perfect opportunity (i.e. not having to run 18 miles) to pull back for a couple of days.



The rest of the day was spent hanging out. Jake fell asleep and Julie took Sophie to go shopping for Jake's birthday. I am amazed that he is almost 2 years old. We've all grown so much in those 2 years. Before Jake was born, CF was just another disease you heard about occasionally. Now, it preoccupies our daily lives (that and figuring out where we'll get enough money to pay bills).



It was nice to get calls from Beth and Zyg (they sang me "Happy Birthday". Beth and I plan to meet for dinner on Saturday when I'm in Bowling Green) and my parents. I love cracking my dad up every year when I thank him and mom for having sex 34 years ago. I think I've been saying that for the past few years. Seems to make him laugh every time.



For dinner, Jules and I went out to eat by ourselves while Vill and Heather watched the kids. Afterwards, we went to their house for desert. Julie made "forgotten desert", a concoction that my mother has perfected and is so awesome it is beyond words. And now, Julie has perfected making it as well. I could eat 5 helpings of it, if it didn't make me sick to my stomach (there's a lot of sugar).



After the kids went to bed, Jules and I just relaxed and let the day wind down. A nice ending to "my" day. Let the 34th year begin.



Aloha.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

MARATHON FOOTNOTES (for those who didn't think I would really footnote a stream of consciousness thought): Footnote #1 Academy Award Winning Best Picture Films from 1969 to the Present: Midnight Cowboy, Patton, The French Connection, The Godfather, The Sting, The Godfather II, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Rocky, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, Kramer Vs. Kramer, Ordinary People, Chariots of Fire, Gandhi, Terms of Endearment, Amadeus, Out of Africa, Platoon, The Last Emperor, Rain Man, Driving Miss Daisy, Dances With Wolves, The Silence of the Lambs, Unforgiven, Schindler’s List, Forrest Gump, Braveheart, The English Patient, Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, American Beauty, Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, Chicago, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Footnote #2 Members of the band YES, from 1969 to the present: In 1969, Yes is formed with Jon Anderson on vocals Peter Banks on guitar, Bill Bruford on drums, Tony Kaye on keyboards and Chris Squire playing bass. This group records...

Basement Songs: "Golden Gates" by John Cougar Mellencamp

I’m not sure when my brother, Budd, bought his copy of John (then) Cougar Mellencamp’s “Uh Huh”. The cassette just showed up in the basement on summer, years after its release. Like most of America, I was a big fan of “Pink Houses”, and I was thrilled that now had copies of his other big hits from that album, “Crumblin’ Down” and “The Authority Song.” At this point in his career, Mellencamp was ready to establish himself as a legitimate artist, hence the use of his real name (the record label wouldn’t allow him to ditch the “Cougar” until years later for fear record buyers may get confused….huh?) In addition, there was the radio staple (at least in Cleveland), “Play Guitar”, on side 2, which borrowed heavily from Them’s “Gloria” (Mellencamp often slipped the “G-L-O-R-I-A”’s into his concerts during that number). The rest of “Uh Huh” is filled with more of the same 60’s garage band type of rock that Mellencamp champions, as well as one of Budd’s favorite tunes, the John Prine co-pe...

In Praise of Kanopy

When I was 17, I worked at American Video, a small business housed in the Great Northern shopping strip. My time there was short, as was American Video’s lifespan. The days of the mom-and-pop video stores were cycling out. Blockbuster had just opened in my hometown and within a couple years, American Video, as well as the store where I first fell in love with movies, First Run Video, would shutter their doors. What I loved about these indie video stores was the variety of choices and the limited number of copies of movies each store had. Come in looking for Back to the Future and it’s already rented? You strolled the aisles until you found something similar like Innerspace , or something completely different, like And Now for Something Completely Different, Monty Python’s first movie. Blockbuster, and its cousin Hollywood Video, may have offered more copies of movies, but they didn’t always have the quality. Maybe your Blockbuster was different.   When Netflix and the stre...