A Day of Excess

Today is my birthday. I was thinking about keeping a low profile in the hopes that the gods of aging will miss the house and fly over, leaving me un-aged. But birthdays are for excess. Eating and drinking to excess sounds tedious to me, and exercising or dancing to excess sounds dangerous. So, I decided instead to post to excess this morning.

My first day of blogging, I made 9 posts. The next, 7. My daughter rightfully declared that ridiculous and since I have actually tried to rein in my propensity to post. Today, though, given it is my birthday, I decided not to hide the idearhea. Enjoy.

I Am Gonna Make It Through This Year

Tomorrow is my birthday. My daughter made me a mix that includes this song. The line, "I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me," rather ominously caught my attention. I might be inclined to make it mean less if it were not on a mix for my birthday.

Really, though, I am just glad that this is a blog and not a novel, where such a line would suggest foreshadowing (just one of the many advantages of being a nonfiction character, I suppose). Meanwhile, you get to hear the kind of music you would be listening to if you had a daughter still hip to the jive and able to update you on the bands with an edge. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Sandi & Jordan!

It is an odd and inexplicable Davison family tradition. My great grandfather married a Canadian. She had a child on her birthday. My own grandfather married a Norwegian (skipping out on the Canadian tradition for one generation), but my uncle married a Canadian who had a child on her birthday. I, too, married a Canadian and 21 years ago, she had a child on her birthday.



There is no one who knows Sandi better than I do and there is no one more impressed with her. She's not perfect, though, and I exploited her poor judgment, convincing her to marry me.

Jordan is the girl that any father would brag about. I exercise an excessive amount of restraint by doing so only rarely. In the quarter just ended, she delivered her first university lecture (right brain vs. left brain) in the cognitive science class she worked in as a TA - a nice milestone for a junior. She very convincingly announces that she's going to be a professor of cognitive science. I believe her. It has been an extraordinary privilege to watch her become an adult from this front row seat.



We celebrated for Sandi and Jordan with nearly 40 friends and family, food enough to feed probably 100, live music, a speech, games and conversations. Given it was Spring Break, we even had some Canadians join us - friends from when my wife was in diapers.

Here they are - in various stages - my two favorite women.

Happy Birthday Scott!

It's Scott's birthday 26 February. (He's the smallest guy in the line, just to my left. He has caught up by now (in height) and has surpassed me in so many other ways.)

Scott showed up at all my family reunions: our mothers were sisters and our fathers are brothers and the two couples were married in a double wedding. At times, he comments here at R World as LS (as in Scott) D. This Christmas we got together and, although we'd only seen each other a couple of times in the last five years or so, he was as easy to be with and talk with and laugh with as he'd ever been. He shares my sense of the absurd. (And to give you a sense of his sense of humor, he'd been reading R World regularly before Christmas. When he saw me, he exclaimed, "It's the analog Ron!") I'm not just delighted that he's my relative - I'm delighted that he's related every which way he turns, guaranteeing that he can't get out of it. Happy Birthday Scott! Given that your folks went for three and mine did not, I'm glad to know that in a pinch I could borrow you as a kid brother. (Or is that, in a punch? That does seem to be how these things work, no?) Put me on the list of people who are glad you were born.

If you would like, you can leave him a comment letting him know what a cute kid he was. And if you ever need any architectural work done in Fresno, you may want to call him direct - although you should know that he does not design tents.

The Ultimate Surprise Birthday Party

One of the problems with surprise birthday parties is that they are, at some level, not really surprises. After all, the target of the surprise is usually unsurprised to learn that it is his or her birthday.

There is no reason to just celebrate on birthdays. Neil Young, whose career was made by the LP, threw a huge bash on his 33 1/3 birthday. So, here's a suggestion for a surprise birthday party that will really surprise.

Rather than make it fall on their birthday, consider throwing a 10k or 20k party - blindsiding them with a celebration after they've been alive for 10,000 or 20,000 days. For instance, a person born 25 September 1980 is 10,000 days old on 11 February 2008 - a date that, on the surface, shows so little correlation to one's "birthday" so as to nearly guarantee a surprise. If you were born on 9 May 1953, you'll be 20,000, again a day far off from February. If you know someone who is 27+ or 54+ or 68+, you ought to do a quick excel spreadsheet calculation to determine whether you've got a great excuse for a surprise birthday party.

Happy Hammicus

Yesterday my darling little wife surprised me with a great birthday party: live music from Hammicus, philosophical volleyball, and a smattering of friends. It was wonderful.


Hammicus is actually a Latin word that refers to the unfortunate fashion choice some men make on our nation's beaches. They play their own compositions - their songs are infused with a mix of reggae, country, folk, rock, and pop. Delightful.



Bob Vincent, Kale Roosen, Toby Remmers, and Matt Elley are not only all singers, songwriters, and play multiple instruments - but they are guys I consider friends in spite of their obvious age deficit. (It'll be decades before they celebrate their 47th).



My only wife (Sandi is second from right) and a few friends.




And me - terrified of aging.

In all, I went off to bed feeling quite indulged. Live music and lively discussion - two of life's essentials.