4 posts tagged “birthdays”

Ack, Ben! You're 15 today. Hooooooolllllly cow. I can't believe it. Pretty soon you'll be 25, and I'll be an old fart like Mom and Dad. Hehe! I'm so funny.

Charles Dickens! Joe and I are about to head up north to the Dickens Fair, and during the 5 hour drive I plan to finish reading A Christmas Carol, AND make a significant dent in Oliver Twist. Think I can do it?

Anyway, just wanted to make a quick morning post in case the day is too busy to do one later. Gotta stick to a post-a-day, right? Woot! Thanks for sticking with me, Wilbur. Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend.

I'm getting old, because today my baby sister turned 17. Ho...lee...cow. I feel like I was just 17 last week.

Anyway, it was a great day...and I'm just BARELY making it here with this post. Sheesh, I haven't even been at this a week yet and I already almost failed. Tomorrow'll be tough, too, because I still don't have internet back up at my house. I'll have to sneak over to Joe's after church...

Tonight was a reunion with my Romania team from 2007 (not this past summer, but the year before that). It was fun! And I felt old again, because all my teammates are flying through life, too. Andrea's in GRAD SCHOOL? When did THAT happen?

Yep...old. I am old.

And then I remember that I'm still only 23. Phew. Got a whole life ahead of me.

Today my mom turned 50. Joe and I drove down to the desert yesterday afternoon, and tonight we threw Mom a '50s-themed party, which was a huge hit! It was great to see my mom enjoying herself, celebrating life with friends she's known anywhere from a couple years to close to twenty. Just about everyone dressed up in '50s outfits, ranging from the tough greaser look to major nerds, conservative librarians (Mom in her pencil skirt) to diner waitresses...it was really fun!

Anyway, I'm barely making it on this post tonight, since it's 11:30 p.m. And unfortunately, I'm skimping on both length and creativity, because I'm distracted by a bout of allergies that came on toward the end of the party. Let's just say that by dose is really stuffed up, ad' also really ruddy. Ad' I keep sdeezi'g.

So...that's it for tonight. Tomorrow I'll try to be funnier. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! You're the greatest. :-)

What is it about Cheez-its that is so deliciously addicting? I mean...CHEESE is the TENTH ingredient. There is more vegetable oil in Cheez-its than there is actual cheese. And, this tiny little package I got out of the vending machine at work contains 220 calories, 11 grams of fat, 25 carbs, and less than 1 gram of fiber. Pathetic. Unhealthy. Despicable. And yet so, so, sooooo pleasing to my tastebuds. (Much more pleasing than Diaper Ointment m&m's...)

Just thought I'd throw that little thought out there to start today's routine NaBloPoMo post. Now on to the real, deep, thought-provoking stuff.

Can you detect my sarcasm yet? You'll get better at it as you keep coming back to read every day...assuming you decide to do so. Basically if you're mildly offended or confused or put off or surprised by something I've just said, chances are I'm being totally sarcastic. Or totally insensitive or incoherent. Those are always possibilities, too.

Last night I watched parts six and seven of the mini-series Band of Brothers with Joe and his neighbors Jeff and Leah (who happen to live in the apartment I was trying to get into when I first moved up to Santa Barbara). We've been watching it together (the four of us) from the beginning, usually just one part at a time whenever we can all be there together to watch it. I am really impressed by every aspect of this series. The writing, the acting, the cinematography...everything is very artfully executed, and the story is so intense that you start to feel unusually close to a bunch of guys who fought a war decades ago and most of whom aren't even alive anymore. The coolest thing is remembering, at every crazy twist and turn of the storyline, that it all actually happened. The whole series is based on a novel which is the retelling of the TRUE story of Easy Company. I can't wait to read the novel...but it won't happen until we finish watching the series, and then probably after I finish a couple books I'm in the middle of already. So anyway, Band of Brothers is excellent.

It's also very disturbing at times. Last night we watched two parts because Joe, who is the only one of the four of us who has seen all of these before, knew that part six was a major downer, and we'd need seven to bring us out of a sense of total despair and hopelessness. Part six was told from the medics' perspective, complete with lots and lots of very realistic blood-and-guts action. Death. Dismemberment. Depression. It's hard stuff to take in...and it only gets harder when you think, Holy cow. This is real. That guy ACTUALLY got shot in the rear. And that one seriously had his leg severed by a flying piece of tree. Yeah...I don't ever want to fight a war. And I definitely don't want to be a nurse. And if I'm perfectly honest with myself, I kind of wish that everyone I know and love would stay as far away from situations that would put them so directly in harm's (or more specifically, death's) way. Ever. So maybe I'm a pacifist. I don't really know if this has anything to do with my personal stance on war as it pertains to our country, or my morals or beliefs, or whatever. I'm just saying that in my heart, I don't want anyone to suffer such horrific experiences. And again, being perfectly honest at the risk of revealing my selfishness, it's largely about the feeling I would get if I had to bear the news of a loved one being killed in combat. I'm too weak for that. And I know this because the only times I've had anyone close to me die, it took me a LONG time to really deal with it.

Whoa...totally did NOT see all that coming when I sat down to write this one. In fact, the plan upon mentioning last night's movie-watching event was actually to segue immediately into the brief conversation we had about birthdays and anniversaries. I mentioned I was going home for Mom's 50th this weekend, and Jeff said his mom just had a birthday last week. Then someone said they knew a lot of people with November birthdays, and we all did the math (November babies = Valentine's Day action). It was funny. And THEN someone said something about an anniversary being on January 6th, and I said, "That's my brother's anniversary! And it's also the day that the girl gets married in Father of the Bride."

And that was going to be the end of THAT random thought in today's post.

Wow. I do believe I have just found further evidence of my inability to ever even consider writing a novel. I can't stick to one train of thought for thirty-seven seconds. Much less for thirty-seven chapters. Or even pages.

If I had my way
Cheez-its would be healthier
Calories are lame