If you find yourself brought back to life as an 8 foot tall, yellow eyed monster, watch some villagers for a few weeks and you will develop a better vocabulary than a college educated English major such as myself.

It’s so strange how birthdays change.

When you are little, everyone runs up to you the second you get up and you are made to feel special all day at school.

In high school, I spent the entire day with people shoving cards and presents in my hand.

Even in college, you’d wake up to your door decorated and lots of well wishes and cards left outside. I even remember my high school friends iming me at 12:01 AM back at school to wish me a Happy Birthday.

But now, in "real life," the day feels different. I didn’t even attempt to have a birthday party this year, though I suppose Saturday’s merriment ended up being one, sans cake. Two of my best buds gave me Muppet-y goodness for presents when we hung out this weekend and another friend wrote me a really nice email all ahead of the day. We had the annual combination party with grandpa (his birthday is the 15th) yesterday and that was really fun. I mused to Steve last night that it didn’t really feel like my birthday was today and, no sooner were the words out of my mouth, than my phone rang and my favorite 10 year old (Casey) called and said "I wanted to wish you a Happy Birthday before I forgot." This made my birthday eve, despite the fact that when I asked her how old she thought I was, she said 30.

Then this morning, as I woke to find the balloons Aunt Darlene gave me yesterday tied to my desk chair, my brother called me to wish me a Happy Birthday for the second time in less than 24 hours and Steve promised me party hats for dinner at my parent’s tonight, I realized that even though there are less people cheering your towards a Happy Birthday, it doesn’t make the day any less special and the ones who do remember just go a little further into your memory as your favorite people ever.

So thank you to those of you who always remember me. Let’s party like its 1979!

As everyone started to tell us about the Hawaiian earthquake, I think a lot of people don’t realize just how ironic it is.

We were supposed to be on our honeymoon this week. In Hawaii.

Our wedding was originally scheduled for October 8th, so that we could have it on a Sunday and lots of people would have had off the next day for Columbus Day. But well into the planning, St Christopher made us change the date and after a flurry of back and forth with the Summit, we changed it to our current anniversary. And when we moved the wedding, we obviously moved the honeymoon to the last week of Sept/first week of October.

At the time, my parents were really stressed and upset at St. Christopher for making us change the date, but now, it seems like it was a real blessing in disguise.