They say that one's perception of time speeds up with age. I think that mine has now doubled, since I think my birthday actually happened across two days this year. Saturday morning I got up at one of those early morning hours and went in to work for a couple hours before getting my hair cut. More appropriately, I had my hair shorn, and it looks like a red, slightly young version of those side-scalped Dutch lady hair cuts. Extra short on the sides but with "body" on top. Blah. It'll grow out... always does... however, I think the haircut should be excluded from anything related to my birthday.
Then I worked until mom and dad appeared with puppy, and instead of gardening we hung around and talked. I needed some serious mommy-cuddles, and it was good to talk about various developments in lab and such. Mom pulled out a box of birthday presents -- per recent family trends, unwrapped -- and I had fun sequentially removing random travel gifts. For example, she picked out Cera Lyte 70 (Natural and Artificial Lemon Flavor), a Rice-Based Oral Electrolyte "designed to effectively correct or prevent dehydration". That sounds... umm... great. Perfect for the plane trip. The front of the package however, is incomplete. CeraLyte 70 is, in fact, "a rice-based electrolyte solution to help prevent dehydration from diarrhea". Other items included "toothettes", which the package describes as "disposable oral brushes" but which I know as "the things one gives a patient to wet his mouth when the patient is not allowed to drink", a personal travel toothbrush sanitizer, and "Flight Spray: The First Nasal Hydration Spray for Airline Travelers". Oh! And just in case I'm wandering around the wilds of Australia without running water, a personal sized water purification/filtration kit. Since it removes "99.9% of waterborne protozoa such as Giardia" (giardia is the reason you should not EVER, EVER, EVER drink from a beautiful mountain stream) as well as "99.9999% of waterborne bacteria" (which I hope means E. coli, the cause of most uncomplicated traveller's diarrhea) and "99.99% of waterborne viruses", I hope that I will have NO excuse to use the CeraLyte!
For dinner, we went to Cafe Verde, a pleasant eatery in Durham, and I had a singularly uninspiring meal with a relatively pleasant dessert. Their food has generally been good in the past, but the skate just wasn't quite right. I really didn't feel like doing anything energetic, and I singularly lacked a desire to dance*, so we rented Casino Royale and watched it and fed Squiggles licorice.
Today we gardened and it was wonderful. I slept in a little because my alarm clock snooze didn't work, but I was still up before the sun warmed the air much, so no big deal. We cleaned out a bunch of weeds in the front, and mom finished tearing up the clover that has been threatening my strawberry plants. She and dad put some fencing around the strawberry and tomato and pepper plants on the south side of the house, and they also fenced around the maple and flowering almond trees that we planted last year. (I'll have to take pictures, especially of the maple!)
Just a few pictures from the day: silver artemisia (artemisia = wormwood, this is just one of the species; not exactly the shot I *wanted* but that's my fault for only taking one) and flowers on my sage, which I don't remember blooming before.
But for today... Michael and Dan made my day with their uniquely different birthday greetings. Dan in his unique way screeched so loudly that it took me a minute to realize that he was "saying" happy birthday, and then proceeded to talk for 30 minutes about Buenos Aires Blues.** Thanks, guys. :)
*i would have gone out to asheville for the regional tango event, but didn't have time and needed the quiet evening...
**i have permission from myself to tease dan. we actually had a good and i think productive conversation about blues, tango, and planning/administration/publicity for the weekend.
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