Ah, September 30th. That cherished day of the year when everyone celebrates my birth… and I try to hide from everyone. I really do hate birthdays. I’m just shy and hate being made a spectacle of, even if it’s in a good way. I turn 35 today. Yes, holy crap… I’m not sure how that happened but here we are.
Tonight at the house we are celebrating in grand style, as we always do. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before but our house has it’s own website. I know… another website. My friends and I can’t do anything without building a damn website about it. The site was created and named in honor of our Chameleon, Admiral Ackbar (from Star Wars). The site is at www.theadmiralshouse.com. The Admiral essentially runs the show around here. Our lives revolve around his every whim. I was only a Captain in the Army, so I am outranked. He runs a tight ship and if it’s cricket feeding time… watch out.
Anyway, the festivities begin at 8:07pm sharp (that’s 20:07 hours for those Mil geeks). I have no idea why it’s kicking off at 8:07. That’s the time my roommates put on the official invitation, which incidentally can be viewed online here.
Hopefully there will be many scandalous photos to follow in the days ahead. I better take my ginseng. Pray for me.
There is a line in one of the songs in the Broadway musical RENT that goes, “How do you measure a year in the life?”. Well for me, this blog has now become a measure. This week marked several 1 year anniversaries for me. September 14th of 2004 was my very first entry here on jpatrickm.com. It was called Prologue. It was a brief beginning of what would become a very fast moving year of many changes. 8 days later, on the 22nd, I would hit the road with my roommate Dylan, in a Budget truck packed to the top, heading south for San Diego. We would spend the next 6 days on the road travelling through Oregon and the entire length of California. We were strangely carefree and eager for sunnier skies. Looking back, I think we were numb to the significance of our move. We didn’t seem at all phased by the fact that everything we owned was packed into a small 15 foot moving truck, or that we were moving to a city we’d only spent the better part of a weekend visiting, or even that we had never actually seen our new apartment that we rented over the internet. Needless-to-say, we took the grand leap of faith out of our comfort zone and never looked back.
I can’t believe it’s been a year. I haven’t been back to Seattle since and although I very much miss my friends there, San Diego has been good to me. It’s one of the few places I’ve lived, maybe the only place, where I haven’t spent part of the year reminiscing about the prior season or hoping for the next. It’s just week to week and weekend to weekend and I am completely content.
I’m not sure I would have observed the passing of this week with such reverence had it not been for this blog. A blog makes you aware of the passing of time. Even though I don’t post here very often, I’m aware of the lapse of time between my posts. Looking back on the September 2004 archive I am pulled right back to my last weeks and days in Seattle. I remember the yard sale that stretched until the very end and the endless packing of boxes. I remember the somber nights with friends enjoying the last days of both summer and Seattle.
I almost feel guilty that I like San Diego so much. I feel guilty that a year has passed and I’ve barely reached back to keep in contact with all my close friends. I even feel the subtle drift from my family in New Hampshire. I didn’t mean to lose contact or forget to call, it just happened. I wake up everyday and it’s sunny and I go about my work, and I walk around the yard with my cup of coffee and watch my roommates load the truck and head off to go surfing at sunset and I just forget and time stands still.
So how do you measure a year in the life? 525,600 minutes. In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee. In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife - or, as the song says, measure in love.
Maybe this year I’ll be a little better at measuring.
Happy Anniversary San Diego.
I’m a little behind on posting my recent pictures. Here are a few shots of Labor Day weekend. A big group of us went down to Blacks Beach to hang out, play frisbee and surf. It was a ton of fun. Great weather and good company. I’m posting the pictures using Flickr again. I think it works well for the blog. I have some funny pictures from this weekend of our Power Hour party. I think they’re funny at least… maybe nobody else will. Stayed tuned for details.
Posted by Joe on 1 Sep 2005 2:59 pm.
Filed under
General Journal.
Yesterday I posted a banner above for those interested in donating to help the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. A network of blogs have also come together to designate today as Blog for Relief Day. Although there are probably thousands of blogs already doing this, every little bit helps. So here is an ongoing list of charities that you can donate to. For information on adding your blog to the effort, visit Katrina Relief: Add A blog.
Technorati Tags: flood+aid, hurricane+katrina, katrina, blog+aid, hurricane+relief, American+Red+Cross
I just finished posting a new entry over at my other political blog, Common Sense Democracy, about a maddening article I just ran across. The article says, “In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.”
I won’t hop up on my soapbox here, but if you want to read more, click over to www.commonsensedemocracy.com. The failures and incompetencies of George Bush and his administration just go on and on and on.
