Birthday candles, toilet paper and the next ‘0’

I’m not entirely sure what Suzi and I will do for her birthday at the end of this month.

Normally, we’d go to one of the restaurants where we eat for special occasions, but this year, we’ll probably just order take-out and eat at home.

But one thing I do know is that, whether dessert is cake or cupcakes like we did last year, we’ll have a “9” candle for the second number of her age, since she bought one the other day.

Surprise! Surprise!

I have predicted a blizzard on my birthday for months.

Since I’m basically a fatalist, I just figured it would be payback for having such an easy winter.

However, the day is now here, and the forecast calls for temperatures reaching the low 80s. So no snow.

That’s a win.

When all you need is an ‘8’

Without getting into the specifics, Suzi and I are well past the age where we’d put one candle for each year on our birthday cakes or the cupcakes we usually eat now.

There are way too many to fit them all easily or get them all lit without any melting, plus the ol’ lung capacity isn’t what it used to be.

Plus it would really suck to explain that our house burned down because of birthday candles.

Forty-seven thoughts for 47 years

My blog buddy Rosie turns 26 tomorrow, and for the occasion, she wrote a blog post about 25 things she has learned in her first 25 years.

I have 21 years and one day on her (I found out recently my birthday is the day before hers), but I figured I’d spell out some thoughts from my first 47 years on this side of the grass.

Some will be things I’ve learned. Some will be opinion. You may disagree with the opinions, but remember this bonus pearl of wisdom I’m about to share …

… I’m always right. (Smile)

A year after “Hamilton”

A year ago today, we spent the morning of my wife’s birthday on a tour of the National Theatre in London …

“It requires a veritable factory behind the scenes and systems that include a rotating drum with elevators, retractable seats, giant storage bays just offstage and crews that pride themselves on building lifelike sets and turning over an entire stage in just a matter of hours.

Is aging just what you make of it?

I’ve had a long-running joke with a friend over the time I overheard her at work a few years ago talking about something that happened “in 1996, when I was 5.”

Quickie math at my desk 10 feet or so away determined she was born in 1991, and since her birthday was yesterday, it meant I was between my freshman and sophomore years in college.

She’s now 26, and in her Facebook message thanking people for birthday wishes, wrote that in her head, she’s 24, and “maybe probably likely one of those people who’s going to hit my prime in my 30s.”

With the exception of the first year, her 30s are going to be my 50s. I have no idea where I’ll be in relation to my prime.

Birthdays and baseball

One of my favorite jokes is that while I’ve always known my wife is smarter than me, she clinched it by making sure she spent her 40th birthday in New Orleans, while four months later, I spent mine at work.

This year, we spent her birthday at “Hamilton” in London, and while I did have to work on my birthday yesterday, I decided I also wanted to do something fun.

I wanted to go to a baseball game.

A favorite birthday memory

My last year of graduate school, I was an intern in the newsroom at WAMC-Northeast Public Radio in Albany, New York.

It was roughly 20 hours a week in the afternoons, and I absolutely loved it, so much that when they offered me a chance to do the same job, but paid, for a few months after the internship ended to help cover for some absences, I couldn’t agree fast enough.

Do cats know it’s their birthday?

Sometime in the period this morning between starting to wake up because going to bed early doesn’t help when your body is trained to only sleep about seven hours and when the alarm went off at 5:15 a.m., my cat Sasha climbed on me.

This was odd for a couple reasons.