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jimsjournal |
A decade birthday -- 04/29/13 |
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Seven Oh! Oh my goodness... I started this web thing back in 1996 but did not make note of my natal anniversary until '98, when I turned fifty-five. In that birthday entry I reflected upon two prior birthdays -- 35 and 50 -- when Nancy had thrown surprise parties for me. With the year 2000 I seem to have begun posting a birthday-related entry every year. The entries for 2000 and 2001 and 2002 may seem a bit odd because they were when I was still using pseudonyms for Jill and Jeremy ("Jennifer" and "Sean") to protect their teenage privacy. Actually, I was surprised to note that I was still doing that in 2003 -- where I had two birthday entries for my 60th birthday -- one on April 29th with a photograph showing how my co-workers had decorated my Dilbert cube for my birthday (a tradition in our group) and another on May 1st with pictures of the surprise party Nancy had thrown for me after work, with my friends from work showing up plus my brother and our cousin Carol having driven more than four hours to travel here. Guess what... I also had a birthday in 2004. The next year my birthday entry was photographs from the James Joyce Ramble 10K that Jill and I had run two days earlier. On my birthday in 2006 I was packing for a trip to a technical conference in Las Vegas. I called my 2007 birthday my Beatles birthday because, of course, it was the year I turned 64. In 2008 I was thinking about retirement, not because I was planning on doing it any time soon, but that was the year I hit 65 and that used to be the traditional retirement age. I turned 66 in 2009 and my birthday entry had photographs of Tiger on a chair by his favorite window. We traditionally considered his birthday to be the same as mine and 2009 thus was his 16th birthday. In 2010 -- my 67th birthday -- I posted two photographs of my father on his 67th birthday plus a picture of me on my 1st birthday. In 2011 on my birthday I noted that the James Joyce Ramble was coming up in two days and that I did not consider myself to be in shape to run it but that I was going to go to cheer Jill on and hoped to run it the next year. And last year I didn't actually post a birthday entry until the day after my birthday -- that's because my birthday fell on a Sunday, the Sunday of the James Joyce Ramble 10k and I did run it (well, I ran most of it, there were some places where it was more like limping) and then we celebrated my birthday that evening with Jeremy fixing a gourmet feast. And the next morning I was up at 4 a.m. to drive Jill to Logan Airport in Boston... so my April 30th entry held the traditional father-daughter post-race photograph and the birthday dinner pictures didn't get to be online until May 3rd. Jill and I decided to skip the James Joyce Ramble this year. I've not been running -- with my triathlon aspirations combined with my December foot surgery, I have been doing minimal running and concentrating on biking, swimming, and general fitness -- and Jill is training for later spring and summer events and I don't think the Ramble fit into her training schedule. Well, actually, I am planning to go out for a run today (but not a long one), just it's sort of been a tradition of mine to go out for a run on my birthday plus I would like to see how running feels on my left foot at this point in my training. There is a 5K coming up in twelve days that I am thinking about doing for fun if I thought I could cover the distance (even if I walked a bit) without discomfort. So... now I am 70... and my planned retirement is just eight months away... And, just for fun, here's that photograph of me at one year old...
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