I don’t think there is anything about birthdays I can say that hasn’t been better said by a bunch of other people. For instance:

• No wise man ever wished to be younger (Jonathan Swift).
• Old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative (Maurice Chevalier).
• A birthday is just the first day of another 365-day journey around the sun. Enjoy the trip (unknown)!
• Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live (unknown).
• For all the advances in medicine, there is still no cure for the common birthday (John Glenn).

I’ve now had sixty birthdays. It was only a few years ago that I thought sixty was really old. I now certainly hope not, because I don’t feel “really old.” I should easily have another twenty birthdays and with the advances in medicine perhaps even thirty or more. That actually has a nice sound to it: thirty more birthdays. That’d mean I’ve still got a third of my life left — plenty of time to get a few more things checked of the list of stuff I want to do before I die.

Since today is my birthday, yesterday was Nina’s birthday. One day of the year we’re the same age. Then we go to bed and I wake up a year older but she only wakes up a day older. I guess there’s some poetic justice in that…. However, since my birthday was one of those “major milestone” birthdays, our kids have all ganged up to send me sixty birthday cards. Most have arrived, some are still on their way. It’s been fun opening and reading all the cards. The variety of cards is very interesting and also reflect a lot of the personality of the person sending the card. I’ve enjoyed getting all of them. They’ll get eventually into a scrapbook as they make a very nice remembrance.

There is a potential problem if I buy anything close to my birthday or before Christmas. Since Nina knows my wishes and desires pretty well, she will use them as a guide when buying presents. This birthday was no different. I’ve been re-reading the Robert Jordan Wheel of Time series and am close to finishing book 8. I don’t have book 9, but I do have book 10. So, Nina bought a copy of book 9 for my birthday. However, on Friday I got an Amazon.com gift certificate from our daughter Heather. She and the grandkids came up on Friday and stayed over to today for our birthdays. Further, her oldest daughter (and our oldest grandchild) is coming up on her sixteenth birthday and is learning to drive. She needs forty hours of supervised driving practice, some of which have to be at night. So, I asked Stephanie if she wanted to get in some night driving and she could drive me over to the Pine Ridge Mall. Of course she wanted to go! Not only could she drive, but we were going to the MALL! There is a rather poor bookstore in the mall. I checked there to see if they had book 9 in stock — they didn’t. They had one copy of all the other books in the series, but not book 9 (that should have been a clue…!!). When we got back home, I proceeded to order the book from Amazon.com.

When I told Nina later that evening that I had ordered the book, she didn’t say much. She later talked with Heather about what to do, and Heather (always wanting to avoid making someone uncomfortable) suggested just taking the book back to the bookstore for a refund and not saying anything as there were other presents. Nina wanted to give me the book anyway just so I would know that she had been thinking of me (and perhaps also to remind me to not buy things just before my birthday). This morning Nina and I talked about it again, and decided that we would give Heather a hard time. Nina would give me the book first as though it was the only present. I’d open it, and she would make a big deal about my already having bought the book. That’s what we did. It went off perfectly and Heather was quite put out when we told her it was a planned act! I guess I made her pretty uncomfortable … Sorry, Heather! (and Stephanie). Maybe sometime in the future it’ll be funny (I hope).

This afternoon we drove to Soda Springs and spent the afternoon with my folks. Mother made a lovely dinner and we had a very nice visit. Dad talked about how he learned he was a father. It was WWII time, he was in the army in Germany and received a V-Mail from mother that mother was going into the hospital to deliver the baby. The day he received the V-Mail was the day his unit crossed the Rhine River. About ten days later he received a second V-Mail letting him know that a son had been born, that he was indeed a father, and that mother and son were doing well. News travels much faster today. I was reading a while back in the newspaper that a father-to-be in the army in Iraq was on the phone listening to the activity in the delivery room as his wife delivered a new baby daughter. One of the services some birthing centers provide (for a fee, of course) is a web-camera feed of the delivery room and the newborn baby. Anyone with an invitation can receive the feed over the internet and participate long-distance in the event.

The day is almost finished. Another decade has begun. This one should see momentous changes in our lives as well as the world around us. Sometime in this decade we’ll hopefully have sufficient money to retire. We’ll serve a couple of missions during the coming decade if our health holds up. We’ll do some traveling and see parts of the world as well as this country that we haven’t seen before. We’ll spend time with our family and grandchildren, present at as many of their major milestones as possible. In ten years the internet will look nothing like it does today. Will these musings still exist somewhere in the ether? I hope so!