Birthday Girl

Today is my birthday. I have now officially entered my fourth decade. I’m the big three-oh.

It was a pretty tame day, though. I went to Wal-Mart and bought a game that Jeff wants to play online together (World of Warcraft), a pair of shorts on clearance (only $5!), and a light bulb for the brake light. I thought one of my brake lights must be out because the dashboard indicator was coming on whenever I depressed the brake pedal. I couldn’t tell for sure, though, because I couldn’t see the lights myself. So when I was at Wal-Mart I asked the guy at the tire/lube place if he could see it. Sure enough, one of the lights was out.

One nice thing about being in the South again is that people are very courteous. When I mentioned that I had no idea how to change the bulb, he told me he could do it if I didn’t mind waiting. So I waited. I was charged a whole $2.15, the price of the package of bulbs.

While I was waiting at Wal-Mart, my even more ancient sister called. (She’s 33, for those of you playing along at home.) It was great to get a phone call. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no better way to pass the time than a phone call from one of my sisters. And they both fulfilled their birthday duties: my youthful sister (age 27) called yesterday.

After I got back to my apartment, I made myself an omelet and ate that and some strawberries (not together!). My mom called to wish me a happy birthday, and we had a nice conversation.

I also installed World of Warcraft, but I was unable to download the necessary updates because of the slowness of my dialup ISP. I was pretty annoyed by that. So tomorrow, I am going to go have dinner at Panera, which offers free wireless access, and download it while I’m there. My better half was pretty disappointed, though, because he had hoped to be able to start playing tonight. The plan is to play gnomes with wild hair and gaudy outfits.

I received a lovely bouquet of flowers today, a surprise gift from Laura. It is actually a plant with flowers rather than cut flowers. I also walked around my apartment complex six times, which works out to approximately 2400 steps. I walked the first and last laps slowly, and the others rapidly.

I made it through the first paper I was to read for my job. I didn’t understand much of it, but I think I got the overall picture. It was really hard to understand because I was unable to work through it since I can’t write. You can typeset it in LaTeX, but I have a tendency to get caught up in the notation and not understand any of the math. I wrote out a few things with my right hand, but once again, I get so caught up with making the symbols that I have trouble concentrating on the math.

On Saturday, I went shopping in the morning. I bought myself some more clothes, and then some groceries. I got a new pair of pants and two new tops. It was Jeff’s birthday so I called him and sang happy birthday to him, and Laura called me and we had a fun conversation. Otherwise, that was a pretty boring day too. I miss Jeff a lot. He makes things a lot more interesting.