This year my age is equally divisible by 5, so it feels like a milestone birthday—even if only a middling one. I took the day itself off rather than do my usual work-from-home day, and I was mildly lazy. I drove my hubby in to work as I usually do on a work from home day, but when I got home instead of going inside to log into the work network, I just sat down on the porch steps with my travel mug full of coffee and let the drizzle come down on me.

I love overcast days with light rain. It’s my very favorite weather, so it was like nature was giving me a birthday present. I posted to twitter and got caught up on personal email until I was out of coffee. But the weather was so nice that after I unlocked the door and refilled my coffee, I grabbed one of our cloth folding/picnic chairs and my iPad and went back onto the porch. I sat there, reading, visiting with a neighbor, watching three bluebirds have a fight, and so forth for for a few hours…

It was a little bit chilly since I was wearing shorts and one of my Seahawks jerseys, but not actually cold. I was just getting to the point where I was thinking maybe I should sit inside where it was warmer for a bit when the FedEx truck pulled up. Moments later I was signing for my new iPhone, so I had to go in, back-up my old phone one last time, activate the new phone, and get down to the very important business of transferring my entire music library to the phone, because I finally own a phone with a large enough storage capacity to hold my entire collection.

My friend Sky had pinged me earlier to ask whether I was working or took the day off, and I had just gotten the phone restoring from backup when I saw the follow-up message for him that he was doing an art livestream from his computer which I might find of interest. He was painting a picture of Applejack from My Little Pony, wearing a Seahawks fan scarf. It was my favorite pony rooting for my team! Woo hoo! I spent a chunk of the time while watching him paint talking my mom through a computer problem. It was soothing to watch the painting. And once mom got the problem on the computer fixed, she was able to figure out the similar problem on her phone on her own. So another yippee!

My hubby left various presents around the house for me to find throughout the day, which was fun. He apologized several times because whatever he had wanted to give me had been delayed, so the things he got me were supposedly lesser presents or something? Why that is silly from my point of view is that one of the presents he got me was a dictionary I never knew existed. It’s an old used book, so it smells like a library or used bookstore. I love dictionaries. I collect dictionaries. And one of the contributors to this Dictionary of Literary Terms is one of my favorite classic sci fi authors, Isaac Asimov. It was a win, win, win as far as I was concerned!

He also got me seasons of Rocky & Bullwinkle and Doctor Who that were on my wishlist, plus a cool purple mouse-tray attachment for my folding purple aluminum lapdesk, and the complete Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious Worlds dvd sets. How could I be disappointed in any of that?

Friday night he took me to dinner to my favorite restaurant, which we walked to so I could over-indulge in wine if I wanted and we didn’t have to worry about driving afterward.

Then on Saturday we met up with a bunch of friends at the AFK Tavern for an afternoon of silliness. Jeff & Jeri Lynn had offered to be my designated driver (this is related to the above in that my husband doesn’t drive). So I had a few more Fluttershy Mai Tais than usual. There was another novelty cocktail at AFK that I’ve been meaning to try, as Jared has recommended it, but I couldn’t remember what it was. However, Sky had ordered a Naughty Wood Elf, which is one I’ve sipped before and liked. He wanted to order something different afterward, but wasn’t sure what, and our waitress said, “Sort of like the Naughty Wood Elf? Do you trust me?” and he said Yes and I said, “Whatever it is, I want one, too.” And so minutes later she brought us both Frost Mages.

We had a lot of fun. It was nice to have Joi, who just moved to Bellingham a week ago, join the rest of our nerd herd at AFK. I showed off the new dictionary as well as the incredibly pretty glittering peacock and gold and rhinestone gift bag my hubby delivered it in. I got a beautiful purple leather coin purse-type thing that has a sonic screwdriver embossed in the leather from Jeff & Jeri Lynn. We decided that it is the perfect thing to hold all of the little adaptors and cables that I keep losing inside my backpack. Sky and J’wyl got me a Christmas t-shirt which is a red shirt with a big gingerbread Tardis on it (I know what I’m wearing to the Christmas Party now!), and a purple-and-black 12th Man/Seahawks fan scarf. This goes on top of the nifty carrying case for USB drives (big enough to actually hold everything) and the fancy teas Mom sent me, and the dark chocolate espresso candies that Kat and Amy gave me. So, I basically made out like a bandit. Yay!

I wound up taking a nap after Jeff drove us home. Then I watched Doctor Who and other things off the TiVo.

Sunday morning was laundry, shopping, and housework. Then I watched my Seahawks finally playing like a team that can win in the afternoon. I had brought home a partial order of chili cheese tots from AFK. I made a small amount of extra chili to supplement them for my lunch/food to eat while yelling at football players on-screen. My hubby turned that leftover into chili dogs for dinner. It was a mildly productive and very relaxing day to end my birthday weekend.

I have spent a rather large amount of the weekend with the phone playing my entire collection on shuffle, streaming it to the stereo. I had warned my hubby that I put everything on, include my nearly 9 gigabytes of Christmas music. While that represents only 1/9 of my music library, I was surprised at how many Christmas songs came up the first afternoon/evening of shuffle play. I had a theory, though, and a quick check of the iTunes library confirmed it. Christmas songs on average are more than a minute shorter than the average of the rest of the library. By number of songs, Christmas music makes up just nearly 1/6 of the library, so when shuffling by song, they come up slightly more often than I was guessing when going by the proportion of space they take up.

My hubby hasn’t asked me to switch to headphones, yet, but if I keep playing shuffle all this week, I suspect he eventually will.

Since this is a milestone birthday, I feel as if I ought to end this with some words of wisdom. The problem is that I have never felt terribly wise. As soon as I typed that, though, I knew what I wanted to say: Life is too short to put up with jerks—so don’t be a jerk. And when you are (because no one’s perfect and we all do it), admit it, apologize, and try to do better next time. More importantly, when other people are jerky to you, remind yourself of the times you’ve done it to others, remember all the times your friends have overlooked your jerkiness, and try to extend the same level of forgiveness to others.