Tag: birthday

Birthday Surprises

Jen made a nice steak dinner for my birthday dinner. Harry got me a new band for my Apple Watch. Bellana called to wish me a happy birthday. Apparently there’s a Zoom call coming up soon. Also, Jen bought my a present that was WAY too big and expensive, also super awesome. There will be pictures later. Very exciting. There was also a video with my family and friends all wishing me a happy birthday. It was pretty freakin’ wonderful.

Turning 50 may be a existential kick in the nards, but my family and my friends have done a really great job of making it feel good. I’m feeling pretty loved right now.

It’s been a really good day.

Someone Else Named Robert’s Birthday

I am not the only Robert who was born on May 8th. I’m not even the first.

Robert Johnson was born on May 8, 1911. He would have been 110 years old today.

There’s been a thing over the last few years where people have been trying to speed correct his records. It wasn’t unusual for recordings made in the 20’s and 30’s to be pressed a little too fast or two slow. Many people feel Johnson’s music runs too fast. It’s hard to deny that he’s a smidge chipmunky at times. Lots of people have been releasing “corrected” versions of his songs. I’ve never listened to them before. It’s always felt a little blasphemous.

I was looking for something to add to this post and a handful of speed corrections came up in the YouTube search. I figured what the hell, right? I’m 50 now who cares what I think.

It sounds all right to me. Maybe a little more natural. One of the comments on the post says that this version is exactly in the key of E which means that it’s probably correct, though Johnson cut these in a hotel room and who knows if his guitar was tuned to A=440 or what. It’s likely it was not. Oh well.

Happy Birthday, Robert Johnson.

Random Birthday Thought

I’ll try not to do this all day today, but here is a random birthday thought.

Why is the focus on the person who was born and not on the mother who gave birth to him/her?

People wish me a happy birthday and that’s nice and I appreciate it and all, but my mother did all of the work. All I did was use my already gigantically fat head to try to tear her a new one and then after it was over all I did was cry. My mother did all of the actual work. Why do mothers get overlooked on their childrens’ birthdays? It’s down right criminal.

So Happy My Birthday, Mom.

The Last Day

Here we are. May 7,2021. The last day. The final day of my 40’s. Tomorrow is my 50th birthday. How’s my last day of early middle age going?

Harry lost his car keys. He took my car to school today. No big deal. He’ll come home today and dig through his room and find them and all will be well. We don’t have a spare to that car. We did, a valet key, but we’re not sure where it is. Purely out of a desire to always have a back up plan that has back up plans, we looked into getting a replacement key. The dealer told us we need to bring the car to them, buy a new key from the parts department, and then have the service department cut it. Expensive, but not the end of the world. Doing the math you’ll find that the difficulty is bringing the car to the dealer when we don’t have a key with which to start the car. They said AAA can tow it to them.

That brings up the next set of questions. We have a AAA account. We also have spent the last 14 months barely using our cars. Did we let the AAA membership lapse due to lack of automotive need? I called them up and told them I just wanted to see if we were active. I gave my name and address, they looked me up. Nope, our account was cancelled. Then I had a thought…

At some point in the past, a couple of years ago maybe, I needed AAA for something and found two different membership cards in my wallet. Same name, different account numbers, different dates, everything. If I remember correctly I called them to see which one was active and found they were somehow both active. I cancelled one of them. Is it possible that on the call today they were looking up the wrong account? I asked what membership number they were looking at and sure enough it was different than the one I was looking at. I gave them my membership and wouldn’t you know it? It’s paid up through September. What do you think of that?

So the moral of the story is, the last day of my forties is kinda being a dick, but at the same time if we need to do this crazy Rube Goldberg-esque key replacement, then we’ve got all of our ducks in a row.

Not too shabby.

Don’t Make Me Do It

Okay… the thing I didn’t want to talk about in the last post.. the thing I am trying to forget…

Saturday… is my birthday… my..

50th birthday.

The thing I should have included in the last post but didn’t is our 12th wedding anniversary on the 30th. That’s going to be a great day. It will be our second Covid-19 era wedding anniversary but that’s cool. It’s still going to be great. There is only one downside to our happy 12th wedding anniversary…

When it happens…

I will be…

50 years old.

The horror…

The horror…

The horror…

Half Day

I’m working a half day today so that I can go visit my father in the hospital. I’m off the clock at 1:00pm. Sweet. I’m off for a full day on the 18th as that’s the day we help my step daughter move out of her dorm. Mothers Day is Sunday, that should be nice. My step Daughter’s birthday is the 19th and it’s a milestone year for her. Very excited.

There’s something else going on this month too. Another landmark event type of thing. I wish I could remember what it was but it seems I’ve blocked it from my memory. If I remember what it is I’ll probably write about it, but even though it’s a huge landmark it can’t be that important, right?

Here Comes the Existential Pain

It’s April 30th. The last day of the month. Normally that’s not a big deal, but this month… this month…

April 2021 is the last full month of my forties. There is a day in the month of May… a day that is coming soon… a day that the first digit in my age changes, and that is a bad thing. When it changed from zero to one it was awesome. When it changed from one to two it was also awesome. When it changed from two to three… well that sucked. That sucked bad. When it changed from three to four it was painful but by then the damage was done, and I also had Jen to make me feel better about it.

Four changing to five feels about the same as three to four, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck. I’ve got eight days left. Eight days left in my forties, which I didn’t even want in the first place but now that they are ending…

crap.

…….and I just found out my friend’s kid has Covid. The universe is a prick.