The birthday week began last Friday. I packed my gear for a weekend of camping and running and drinking in the gorges near Ithaca, did a little last minute shopping, went into work to change out my backup tapes, sat in on a conference call while I ate my sushi, and waited for my ride to show. I went to KMart, since I wanted an air compressor to blow up my air mattress with. While I was there, I bought a pallet of bottled water and some new shorts. Tick me off - two of the shorts were marked the right size, but ended up being too big. I'll have to take those back. While I was standing in line, a women in front of me was acting very strangely. She kept walking away from the counter, coming back, wandering away again. She even walked behind the counter and peeked around. When it came to be her turn, she asked for cigarettes, but didn't identify them by brand name. There was a sign with categories of cigarettes; "Premium, Generic, and Best Buy." She demanded the carton that said "Best Buy" on it. Well, there is no such thing, and the clerk was a little frustrated with the lady. The lady went behind the counter and just grabbed a couple packs at random. The clerk rang her up, and the woman swiped her card. All of sudden, there was drama. I don't know what set her off, but the upshot was that the wierd lady shot out of the store, leaving her bagged purchases behind, screaming "This would never happen at Walmart! I'm going there!" The bewildered clerk called a manager over, and they voided the charge on the woman's card. Then I checked out. The manager was muttering that "Walmart can have her." I said that the woman fit their demographic to a T. Of course, I had to ask for the "Best Buy" brand cigarettes. Heh.

So. The trip to Ithaca. I don't recall if I mentioned this, but I was off to my first weekend long interhash event. We had the run of a campground in a small forest near Ithaca. The plan was to load of 3 adults, two small dogs, and all our gear for 3 days into a small station wagon and drive out. Somewhere during the course of the weekend, we were to trade in a small dog for a bicycle. My ride was a little delayed, but we made it to the campsite just in time to catch the bus to town. Imagine 50 of us on a bus rated for 30, singing songs. Crazy! We traversed pubs downtown, down a gorge, through the commons, had food, beer, and laughs. Then the bus took us back to the campsite for more of the same. I enjoyed the hot tub and meeting fellow hashers from Toronto, Rochester, Erie PA, Philly, NYC, and Ithaca. The whole weekend was full of activity. Played in a drum circle. Ran trail. Played Ultimate Frisbee. Ran 8 miles up-freaking-hills. Got lost in the woods and ended up running both the Eagle and the Turkey trails. Ate a lot of new things: smoked trout, speedies, portabella mushroom, papaya. One of the hashers grows strawberries and brought cases to share. On the way back, we stopped at a gorge (that's the picture this month) for some looky-looing, then stopped at a friend of my ride's place to pick up the bike. We had drinks and lunch at their cottage on the shore of Cayuga Lake. Stopped again near Binghampton to drop off the dog - a rat terrier that everyone fell in love with, and had dinner there. Awesome time. I was so beat when I got home, since I was up late every night.

My new tent, in action.

Monday was my birthday. It was really nice to walk into work and find a balloon and emails from friends. We had a happy hour scheduled for after work for a departing coworker, so it became sort of a dual purpose thing. I bought drinks for the coworker, and everyone else bought my beers. It was nice to see everyone. A friend who lives in Virginia even came up (ok, he was already up for the week on vacation, but that was our story). Afterwards, I went out to dinner, and when I got home my housemates had a cake waiting for me with candles. Oh man - I was so full! Presents, too - a new cordless phone! Another great day. Oh - and I sold the Rush tickets! Bonus!

So, that brings us to today. Kind of a crazy morning. I had two servers just go nuts. They both had to get rebooted. One spit up when the new virus definition was being copied to it, and the other went dumb when I was deleting old files off of it. I had to put them down. I'm surprised that my pager didn't go off while I was futzing with these boxes. I had lunch with some friends, and plan to play volleyball in this stinking heat later and then maybe get together at a bar to watch the all-star game.

Happy Birthday, America!

I hope everyone is outside, in a pool, at a BBQ, having a beer, kicking back with friends, spray painting their sister, reading a book, washing their car, playing with the dog, or doing something they love today.

Just keep in mind that there are people all over this world who don't have what we do. They never will. Remember them. So what a pledge has the phrase "Under God" in it. So what we wait a little longer at an airport to ride in a plane? So what our elected leaders sometime fall short of our expectations? (Expecting anything is just asking for trouble.) Our bellys are full. We have air conditioning and chloronated pools of water in our backyards. Appreciate what we have here, and don't piss all over it.

See you at the fireworks show.