Birthday

I had a party! My first one in years! We went to Outback and had a great time! Evidence of fun:

Not a good picture of Ted, but the other ones weren't great of Tara (Sorry Ted).

Cutest picture of Jeremy and Denise! They were able to come at the last minute due to a cancellation of his family's Christmas (bad weather).

Eric and Nicky. We're losing more friends to far away places. They're moving to India in February!

I have to post this because it happens to be a pretty good picture of me; Jon is not smiling because he's swallowing--whoops! (Notice the beautiful sapphire necklace that Jon got me!)

I'm pretty happy at this point--with a tummy full of steak!

Part of my birthday present from Ted and Tara. I figured I'd model it while they sang "Happy Birthday" to me. Stylish.

Ted's operatic "Happy Birthday."

We had a wonderful cake from Arnie's while sipping my favorite champagne and a great late harvest reisling. I didn't expect the champagne to taste so wonderful with the chocolate cake; perhaps it was just the birthday euphoria. Perhaps not.

In our thirties

Jon pointed this out to me yesterday. One of his seminary professors has a link to this guy's blog on his blog (Mike Wittmer's link to Zach Bartel's blog). I almost cried by the end when I realized how true I find the statements. I've added a few of my own to the end of the list.

It's quite poignant, especially as I consider my impending birthday.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Getting older...
I'm thirty. No, that's not old in years. It's still pretty young. But old has several definitions and one of them indicates a state of mind. Some people, at thirty, are still more or less like they were in college (and still living more or less the same kind of life). Others are consumed with the daily grind or raising a couple of tweens.

Now, I haven't much thought about it, but in the back of my mind, I think I've always just assumed that I'm on the "younger" end of things for a thirty-year-old. I mean, I still listen to hip hop and punk music from time to time. I watch a lot of movies and can follow most pop culture references. But upon further inspection, these are not nearly enough to hold me back from my relentless and apparently passionate pursuit of boring-old-guy-ness.So what are the signs? Well, here are a few:

• My favorite cereal is no longer Cinnamon Toast Crunch or even Honey Nut Cheerios. It's Special K. That's right; if I could have any cereal on a given morning, I'd always choose Special K.
  
• When I go to a concert, I don't want to mosh. I don't want to dance. I don't even want to stand. I paid good money to sit here and listen and that's what I want to do, thank you. Down in front.
  
• When I read Calvin and Hobbes, I get a far bigger kick out of Calvin's dad (heck, I am Calvin's dad) than I do out of Calvin himself.
  
• I think of ten-year-old songs that were popular during my college years as being more or less "new." (I seriously can't believe that Time of Your Life and Iris are actually a decade old; heck, the Coolio song in my last entry--the one that Erin and I used to crank in my car--is thirteen years old. How did that happen?).
  
• In addition, I couldn't name one song that's on the top forty right now (if there even is still such a thing) and when I happen to hear said current pop music, I hate it 95% of the time.
  
• So I pretty much just listen to podcasts of financial and theological radio shows. Wow, when I write that out, it's just... man, I'm old.
  
• I frown when someone tells a dirty joke.
  
• I wear a tie just about every day. And I like it that way.
  
• I'm far more excited about watching everyone else open Christmas presents that I bought than actually opening presents myself.
  
• I'd rather play Pac Man on my Palm than learn how to play some new photo-real, adrenaline rush video game. On second thought, I'd rather play cribbage or backgammon than any of that stuff.
  
• When I employ slang whilst talking to the youth of my church, I can see them exchanging sidelong glances and trying not to snicker.
  
• More often than not, the thought of going to a party drains me, rather than exciting me.
  If the subject of music, television, fiction, newspaper funnies, shopping malls, etc. comes up, my first instinct is to begin a diatribe about how it used to be so much better.
  
• I don't yet have the old-guy-up-at-dawn-ready-to-go thing down just yet, but I want it more than anything.
  
• And here's the real nail in the coffin of my youth (at least by this particular definition)...I drink decaf at night now. Decaf. If my 19-year-old self could have a meeting with me, he'd beat the tar out of me for my own good.

Beth's additions:

• Jon and I have a regular Saturday morning breakfast place. We've been going for about 3 1/2 years, our waitress knows us so well she got us a housewarming present, and she can generally put Jon's order in without having to talk to him about it. Oh, and we prefer to be there before 7:00--our waitress arrives around 6:00, and we like to be there when there are virtually no other patrons present.
• I'm leasing a "practical car" rather than a "kick ass" car.
• I don't text. I don't send picture messages. I don't IM. Hell, I don't answer the phone if I don't absolutely have to.
• I think the mailman has delivered more bills than Christmas cards this year.
• We eat dinner at 5:00 pm, sometimes a little earlier. If we go out, we're frequently the youngest people in the restaurant by about 20 years.

Anyone have anything equally or more pathetic? (Please!?!?)

Boo!

Exam week was not all I had hoped for here. I played not a single game with our students. Instead of going through 11 bags of popcorn in the circus style popcorn machine like we did last semester, we went through 4 (and most of that batch is sitting there, stale, in the machine. It was a week of long meetings, tons of snow, and alternating extremes of maddeningly boring spells mixed with serious job responsibilities. Eek! The college closes down on Wednesday for the holiday break, and I seem to be the only one here for these first two days of the week. The rest of my department is full time staff, and they have each accumulated copious amounts of vacation time. I, part time peon that I am, accumulate none. Two long, boring days are in store for me.

On a different note, I reread Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy in the last several months (it's long and I'm busy!). It's my third time reading the fictional biography of Michelangelo. I found new things during this reading and was able to correct things I just plain remembered wrong, and I discovered that I still enjoy it and find it to be insightfully and engrossingly written. It's well worth reading every 7 or 8 years!

On the other hand, I started (and am about half way finished) with another novel. I had lent a book to a student of mine, and she returned the favor. I'm now reading The Last Templar, by Raymond Khoury. I wish I could say that I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying having something to read, but the novel is so poorly and awkwardly written, it's actually a bit painful. I try to console myself with the idea that "at least it's an interesting story," but I'm just kidding myself. It's predictable in that I'm not surprised by anything that I think I'm supposed to be surprised by. But I'll keep reading it because I tend to finish books I start and because, even though I'm reading it half braindead, I still don't have to go back and reread the parts I was totally braindead while reading. I'm not expecting greatness in the second half, but I suppose anything is possible.

I know I'm just fooling myself again.

Exam week

I love exam week here at Aquinas!

Food, games, and talking--that's about all I do during our exam week hours. We are a "Stress Free Zone" for students this week, which happens to mean that my job is virtually stress free as well! My 8 hour Monday has felt more like 2. Wonderful!
If only I didn't have those essays to grade for my class!

Holiday Shopping Trip

I volunteered last night for the GR Jaycee's Holiday Shopping Tour and brought a big group of students from my department at Aquinas (and then assembled into a bigger group with students from GVSU and GRCC). The Jaycees take underprivileged kids shopping for Christmas gifts for their families, and then the children meet Santa and get a present for themselves. I was a personal shopper last year and did it again this year. This is bit problematic for me because this involves shopping... with children.
I'd heard that there were going to be local celebrities helping out yesterday, but I didn't really think much of it. But I saw Mary Ellen Murphey, a DJ; Antoinette, a spokesperson who I see on tv who promotes GRCC; Gerry Barnaby, a tv news guy; and John Gonzalez, a reporter for the Grand Rapids Press. I was paired up with someone to shop with because, for a little while, there were more volunteers than kids. My partner was Dr. Bernard Taylor, superintendent for Grand Rapids Public Schools, a fairly influencial fellow. It was really cool to see television and radio personalities, but when I talked to my students about these people, they had no idea who I was talking about. I suddenly realized how long I've lived in Grand Rapids and how damn old I am. I'm all excited about seeing and meeting local celebrities--this is not what many people, especially college students, give a crap about.
However, I'm still damn impressed.

plow service

We decided to hire a plow service for our driveway, in this first winter in our house. It's hard enough to do all of the other crap around the house for the first time, we really didn't feel like buying a snow blower and then having to snow blow every day or every other day. We'd be playing a lot of rock, paper, scissors to see who had to go out in freezing temps to do it. Okay, that comment is not fair to Jon--I'd want to help out, but I doubt he'd ever make me do it.
Back to my complaint--yes, how could I complain about it, you ask? The plow guy will come at, like, 2:00 a.m. A lot of snow can fall between 2 a.m. and 7 a.m. when Jon leaves for work. And a lot more can fall between 8 a.m. when I leave for work and when we get home in the afternoon. Our driveway still has a crapload of snow on it! It's snowed all of 3 or 4 times this winter, and I'm already wondering why we didn't just bite the bullet and buy a dang snow blower!