Welcome to My World

My birthday brought an assortment of happiness this year, and despite my brooding about turning the “big” 30 (yeesh — talk about drama queen … my life is likely less than a third over, and “30” isn’t so big; hell, my voice cracked today as I was singing a song at karaoke, and I was told puberty ended in the teens ) I got all the warm fuzzies I needed given what happened that same week.

Friends and family both conspired to make the event memorable, and they succeeded. Despite that I’m over there all the friggin’ time, they managed to sneak around and snag some gifts for me without my having even a single clue they were doing it. My folks sent a very nice gift as well (it arrived a bit late since apparently the first attempt to buy it saw the merchant claim the beast was “damaged” at the warehouse before it could be shipped).

There was a big, nice leather computer bag (the gadgets and stuff I carry around finally outgrew the one I’d received last year from a former coworker), and within it were two books I’d expressed interest in (paperbacks, both science fiction works) and a gift card to snag some more once I burn through these (heh, not bloody likely anytime soon, as you’ll understand in a moment). The shipment from my parents was a 23-pound monster — the Complete Calvin & Hobbes, a three-tome compilation of every Calvin & Hobbes comic strip ever published.