Trick Birthday Candles

I hate trick birthday candles. 

It's such a mean thing to do, and you worry about looking like a dork attempting to make a run at it, coughing up like you did when you first smoked, running out of air you might need later in the day in a real emergency... 

I just typed an elipsis — one of the punctuation elements I hate most. Obviously something is very wrong and I am off kilter if I actually use punctuate I emphatically and publicly hate. 

Trick birthday candles are bad. 

Please. Don't.

What if James Blunt is right?

Saw great James Blunt performance last night at the Beacon Theatre, at which we, coincidentally, sat with Mish and Catherine, proving New York is smaller all the time. 

This worry isn't about going to the Upper West Side (though it can be quite crowded -- there was a baby stroller even in the entrance to the wine bar we went to before the show), but about James Blunt's moving music and if you know the story behind the song.

Listen to or re-watch the video to "You're Beautiful," and it's about coveting another man's girl;  Goodbye My Lover is heart-breaking but was a crowd pleaser.

Anyway, he put on a stunning show. At the end the light coming from behind him made him look just like Jesus.

11-15 from the list

I've had some requests to see more from the big list:

- Cylons are real. They are coming. They have a plan. (11)
- Lose physical or mental ability to write (12)
- Miss minimum payment date on credit card, forfeiting points and damaging credit (13)
- No toilet paper (14)
- Cars parked over dry leaves blowing up (15)

What I'm most excited about is the return of BSG this spring. Toilet paper, too, is under control. 

We are what we say we're doing

My friend Adam writes that #226 on the list might be the stress of crafting a witty retort for the comments field on a blog.

I would argue that this worry actually goes much higher up on the list. In the modern age, we put ourselves under much much more pressure to show off with our Facebook status, Twitter twits, blog barbss, or pity responses in email reply alls.

Scrolling down friends' status on Facebook, for example, you can see the landscape in one sweeping glance. It's a daily (or hourly) game of one-upmanship. We pause to draft the best latest status to catch eyes and then edit it just so to earn a smile.

 

Let's call it stagus — our bragging status. 

Old Farts in a Young War

Heard a moving piece recently about a veteran writing about youth and age. Good wisdom in this:

"Youth always thinks it has the upper hand. They are toned and firm and, we, for the most part, are soft and pudgy. But you see, it's always an advantage to be older. We have had our chance to be their age, but they only get to be ours if they're lucky."

Excerpt from Poem by Major Steve Nolan, 55, Chief of Combat Stress, Son of WWII Army Nurse Kate Nolan, recipient of French Legion d'Honneur; as heard on NPR Driveway Moments podcast

President's Day Worry

Having the day off gives one extra time to reflect.

On NPR today on the drive back downstate, I learned the shortest president was not Martin Van Buren, as I thought, but James Madison, as I did not. 5'4" hardly seems that incredulous, but then again I can rarely find any size below XLL even in Club Monaco. America is hypergrande and hypergrosse. (Is it less offensive if it's said pretentiously?)

My favorite early president continues to be Grover Cleveland, partly because he's from New Jersey and partly because two non-consecutive terms is pretty interesting.

Wet Roads (17)

This time of year, I find it's good to worry about wet roads.

Now, I not only have unpaved and hilly country roads to content with up at my in-laws in Columbia County, but we recently traded our SUV in for a MINI Cooper. It's snappy, it has zip, and it's the first winter of the little engine than can on slick roads. So far, so good, though.

I suppose if it ever gets stuck in mud, we can just pop out of it and leave it. There's a Union Jack blanket in the back seat for the pup, we would take that with us.