Haaaaaaapppppy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to LuciWiz,
You smell like a shoe.



It seems every year my niece learns a new line to add for her brother's birthday song. That gem (with the names changed to protect the not-so-innocent) was this years favorite.

Lucian, did you get a new modem for your 22nd birthday?

Mark

Believe it or not, I actually remember when I was a little kid and someone asked me what the definition of an "old" person was. I said, "25". Why? Well, maybe because there so many things that I couldn't do (or wasn't allowed to do) because I wasn't "old" enough. Twenty-five seemed about right. Being "old" wasn't a Bad Thing; it meant that you could do whatever the heck you wanted.

When I was a teenager, If someone asked me how old I would like to be, I would have said, "25"---for lots of reasons. "Old" would be, well, something more than 25, obviously, but what teenager thinks about getting old (or being old)?

As I started pushing 25, my thoughts were a little more organized, and I would have said that "middle age" is 40, and "old" would be, well, something more than 40, but I still didn't think much about it. And the "best" age was about "five years from now," since I found that I still wasn't able (or allowed) to do everything I had wanted to do ever since I was a little kid.

A few days ago a 50-ish friend of mine ruptured an Achilles tendon trying to play soccer (that's the quaint name for football that we have in the U.S.) with a bunch of 20-ish people the way he did when he was 25. He found out that there are lots of things you can do when you are 25 that become problematic at some later time in your life.

Bottom line: maybe this is as good as it gets. Enjoy! See footnote.


Regards,

Dave

Footnote:

About 10 years ago there was a Jack Nicholson movie titled "As Good as It Gets". (Jack won one of his Oscars and former TV actress Helen Hunt also got an Oscar. So maybe it should be called a 'Jack Nicholson/Helen Hunt' movie. Nah---any movie that Jack is in is a 'Jack Nicholson' movie.)

The punch line came as they were in the waiting room of a public Mental Health clinic. Imagine the sea of humanity: people, most of them obviously not quite "all there", waiting hopefully to see some kind of therapist who could, maybe, give them some kind of clue on how to cope with whatever horrible problems would drive them to such a place in their lives. (There were some other really, really great scenes, but this one is short enough to describe.)

Jack looks around and says to the room at large, "Did you ever stop to think that maybe this is as good as it gets?"

Thanks for the good wishes.

It is strange, really. Most of the people I meet online or professionally consider me young, but I feel old. Too old. Maybe I am going through a precocious middle-life crisis. I didn't play "soccer"(!) for years. I spend my weekends fantasizing about going to work. Is this normal?

Anyway, the time spent on GID is a very important part of my life - a joyful one. Thank you all for being here for the ride!

Lucian

P.S: No modem, but some really cool books. And the Swiss-knife-of-watches! I'll probably have to wear it on my ankle, my hand is to skinny to support it. Though this may turn out to be a good thing - it could protect my Achilles tendon, just in case!

Happy B-day LuciWiz. Now you can sit at the big kid's table. Now let's talk about me.

It's funny. Even though I'm "thirtysomething" (anyone remember that show?) now, I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up. When I was a kid I went through the usual astronaut/fireman/generic-cool-job phase. When I started college I knew I wanted to do human/robotic interfacing. Then I found out that I'm good at computers and thought I'd go into tech support. Then I lost my job and ended up in the Navy as a nuclear chemist/radcon tech. Then I had medical problems that disqualified me and now I do IT work for the Navy. Not to mention that I have an AS in Electromechanical Tech, a BS in Computer Engineering Tech, and I'm working on an MS in IT Management.

Now, with all of this in my background, I still don't know what I want to do with my life. I thought I'd want to be a programmer but decided that I'd rather not have it as my day job. So then I thought about management but realized that spending all day in meetings isn't that fulfilling. Now I think I might want to be a college professor, but that would require getting a Ph.D. and I really want to take a break from school after this.

Anyone else in as bad a shape as me?

Pfft... in my head, I am still 19!

Happy birthday Luci -- when I grow up, I wanna be just like you!