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Randy Booz was having a birthday party this evening and I was supposed to pick up someone on the way over. I received a message that they were delayed so I went to Randy’s first. In a way I’m glad. I didn’t actually have room for them with all the space in my car occupied by cakes.

Randy’s party was enjoyable and it was the first time I had taken my attempt at a beard out in public. It was well received and someone asked me why I hadn’t done it sooner. After chewing on it a bit, I realized that one of the things I hated about having a five o’clock shadow was that it made my double chin pronounced. Now that I no longer have one, I wonder if a beard is something I would have stumbled upon if it hadn’t been otherwise recommended.

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Chris and I went to the Oklahoma Osteology Museum which, appropriately, had a large collection of extant animal bones. The collection spanned all the major classes and orders of vertebrates and the work was impeccable.

Peaking Milkduds

Some of the displays were rather light hearted a la this raccoon skeleton and while there while the discussion of life and death was frank it never crossed into being morbid. I expected there to be dinosaur or other bones at some point but realized that those would be fossils instead. The one exception to this was the display on hominids which provided a set of replica skulls making a nice family tree.

10279-BoneMuseum-20120829 Picture

After the bone museum, Chris and I went to Walgreens to get Christine a card as today was her birthday and I received a call from a firm with which I had interviewed.

Me: Terry Robinson speaking.
Her: Terry, this is <name>.
Me: What can I do for you?
Her: I’m calling regarding your interviews with us. I’ve spoken with my bosses and the other interview members and I’m sorry to say *my heart dies* that we really wanted to offer you a position *heart breaks into pieces* but we can’t *broken heart pieces scattered to wind* until October. *Heart pieces re-assemble, and forge into super heart, fist rises skyward*
Me: That sounds wonderful. I look forward to working with you.
Her: You’re ok with that.
Me: Yeah, I’m on a road trip right now, I’ll probably fill the time with studying and taking another one.
Her: Oh, well if another position opens up elsewhere that you’d like to take in the mean time, please keep us informed.

I emitted a victory howl and Chris and I went to a Braum’s which provided a presentable lunch. Their burger was fine but the ice cream I couldn’t have looked far better. We picked up Suzie and returned to Chris’s and talked. Normally, a third person in a conversation proves a wildcard but there is an unusual degree of synchrony between Suzie, Chris, and myself. Chris and Suzie share a knowledge of programming that’s alien to me and Chris and I get to talk about Web 2.0 crap and our membership in the Cult of John Roderick. The next two hours passed quickly and then we went to the Cheesecake Factory to celebrate Christine’s birthday.

This was my first visit to a Cheesecake Factory and I didn’t see much of the draw besides incredibly rich food. The simple strictures of low-carb eating kept my meal under 1000 calories which proved less than a single slice of cheesecake. One menacing aspect was that the decoration appeared to be both palatial and Tolkeinesque.

I don’t know if it’s a phenomenon I am only now noticing or only now affected by but when visiting someone I haven’t seen in a while, it takes a few hours to remember who to talk to that person. Maybe it’s re-aquainting with cues or collecting enough background information to have a conversational foundation but the number of silences decreases rather than increases over time as if we weave more conversation from whole cloth over time.

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My brother turns 30 in a few days and he’s not 30 yet in my mind having “just” landed a reasonable job (really 3 years) and “just” getting married (really 5 years) of which neither matters as the calendar is unapologetic in keeping track of time.  I talked to him a few times over the evening, mostly about photography, as he and I have little to talk about besides our parents and sometimes computers.  I brought up something that’d popped up recently:

Me: A friend asked me to be the photographer at his wedding.  What do you think I should charge?
Him: Run.  Get as far from that shit as you can and then keep running.  Unless he’s blind, say no.
Me: Why?  He seems to like my pictures and his standards will probably be forgiving.
Him: If my best friend was the photographer at my wedding and screwed them up, I would remove his balls with my bare hands.  I have been in 1 fight in my life and while i like guns I’m not violent.  But the man who fucks up my wedding photos should use the money I paid him to buy a life insurance policy because he would be a dead man.
Me: Maybe I’ll decline and just offer to do some portraits.
Him: Now you’re thinking.

Maybe my brother’s wiser than I thought.

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I received 80 “Happy Birthdays” on Facebook of some form or another.  Here are my stats on it:

“Happy Birthday” with no mention of name: 25
“Happy Birthday” followed by name, no comma: 30
“Happy Birthday” followed by name, comma:  9
Other: 20

Longest Streak: 9 people in a row wrote “Happy Birthday Terry”.
Likelihood of a Post before 3 AM using a comma correctly:  39%
Likelihood of a post after 3 AM using a comma correctly:  9%

Likelihood that a post method would be followed with the same post method: 38% (28% predicted by random chance).

I wonder how these stats would change from wall to wall.

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At about 11:30 PM the day before my birthday I removed the date from being listed on Facebook to mitigate the deluge of “Huppy Birfday” messages.  I checked through other birthday publishing things and turned those off as well but missed one: my TF2 team’s site.   Shortly after midnight, someone on the west coast posted “Happy Birthday” and the cascade of the news feed rolled across my friends list.  Damn.  There is a down-side of not giving a date in that people make assumptions when not given information such as the message from a Scout friend “congratulations on making it to 32!”.

My brother has missed a couple of my birthdays in the past and I don’t hold it against him but he’s developed as a gifter.  I received a text message in the morning asking me if I wanted anything in particular, I said no, so I got cash, a card and a pack of gum.  He felt uncomfortable not giving me an actual box.

26 feels much like 20 and 22 as useless ages with no milestones.  23-29 is one of the rare inversions in the aggregate life table were one’s less likely to die year-on-year and I can feel the wisdom of age reducing my chances of dying this year being 35 millionths lower than last year.  To prove it, I’m going to forego my summer ritual of wrestling a bear while bungee jumping.