Special Day

Despite my protestations to my made-up god and insistence that things start looking up before I got measurably older, my birthday arrived once again. But, as Doug used to say, "better to get older than the alternative."

My business trip for this week was cancelled (and I may have been kept at home anyway due to my health) and my day in the office was typical: pain and exhaustion and boredom broken up by flashes of energy and happiness/focus for 15-60 minute increments during which I was distracted from my self-pity by human interaction or an interesting endeavor.

I decided to organize a group outing to the one activity we've all said we should do and never never done: the Comedy and Magic Club. I figured I was too old to advertise my birthday, so I didn't tell anyone at first the reason for the outing, simply stating that it was a "special day". But you know me, I like attention and I like to feel special (especially now), so I kept shamelessly leaking my secret throughout the day.

Note: If someone invites you to go out for their birthday, then follows up in person to ask you if you can go to their thing, the WRONG response is "what thing?".

I had a handful of "declines", two "accepteds", and a right bushel of no responses. With that kind of social apathy I felt like I was back in grad school, where they taught me "'yes' means 'maybe', 'maybe' means 'no', and 'no' means 'hell no'". BUT it didn't matter: the three of us had a wonderful time. The night was for a charitable cause that was never fully disclosed; from what we could gather, the subject was a young man who had been involved in a car accident in which the other driver was drunk and the three other occupants were killed. Very sad. For our donation, we were rewarded with four funny comics and one really good magician.

It was an absolutely fabulous day!