my poor, poor mother.

anno domini MCMLXXX. i think that's it anyway, the year of our Lord 1980; it was the hottest summer on record to ever singe the eyebrows and smite the elderly of dallas, texas. according to locals who were around for both of them, the only summer that rivals that one was the one eighteen years later, in 1998. now i was around for that summer and if 1980 was worse than that one, i don't even want to deign to ponder what it must have been like. now i mentioned my poor mother because she spent nearly the entire summer of 1980 lugging me around inside her even slighter than it is now 18 year old frame, 1980 was in fact the summer that i made my first appearance on our fair planet.

so i'm 24 today, and i'm fairly certain that it'll be a good day, i mean as long as i don't get taken roller skating and no family members of mine get shot. other than that there's not really much to it, i mean i s'pose it'd be exceedingly easy to talk about all the sort of standard, small-talky birthday stuff, you know, like "wow made it through another year," "how's it feel to be year older?", stuff like that, but the banality of that might drive me to self-destructive behavior, i'm thinking bamboo shoots underneath fingernails right this second.

gordon keith's held forth on the subject of birthdays, though i'm not certain he's done it on his blog, but he's more or less of the opinion that after childhood, birthdays really have no use being acknowledged. i agree with him in that with a few exceptions, birthdays after about age 12 or 13 aren't really and shouldn't be a big deal, but i don't go as far as him in declaring it solely another day on the calendar. what i look forward to the most are lil things, the notes, the cards, stuff like that, in fact i would be fine if i never had another birthday party as long as i lived. i guess what i appreciate most about birthdays is that they provide an opportunity for thoughtfulness, which goes both ways, i'm like anybody else, i appreciate being told that i'm being thought of, and i really get a rush when i'm able to do something nice for someone else, i think i was more excited to get bone the DVDs of the first season of 24 than he was to get them and i was nearly giddy to send laura her birthday box last year.

on the other hand, i don't guess that we should need any special occasion for thoughtfulness, but that'd seem to be fodder for another entry entirely.

feeling: good
thinking of: the old conditioning test
music: "amalgamate" five iron frenzy