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Yesterday was my birthday. It's been a great weekend.

Yesterday, I finished some curtains I started three years ago. I colored my hair, so even though I'm old, I don't so much look it any more. I went shopping with my older son; we bought a new TV and stand for the TV. Now I can play DVD's! O'Henry's, a local restaurant, gives you a free steak dinner on your birthday, so we went out for dinner.

Today's highlight was courtesy of one of my bosses. He let me borrow his copy of the 30th anniversary edition of Born to Run, with a concert DVD for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's first concert in Europe, at the HammerSmith Odeon in London. Here's a great review of the audio CD from Pandora.com. It's about two hours long and it never stops. Awesome. I'm thinking of holding the DVD hostage.

I've been pretty lazy today, but I guess that's OK, 'cause I'm so old. I need my rest.

Slacker

No, not me. I work my butt off.

But it might be easy to think I'm a slacker because of my severe lack of blogging. It's been a very busy two weeks, and I'm glad things are settling down into a more normal routine.

I love, love, love Saturdays. My real live day of rest. I do stuff on Saturdays, of course, but my time is unstructured and my own. I make decisions based on my own priorities with input from my family and then I DO AS I PLEASE.

Sundays are supposed to be the day of rest. Hah. It's much better now that I'm better with my boundaries about church stuff, but hey, I DON'T EVEN GET MY BREAKFAST MADE FOR ME ON SUNDAYS YES I'M SHOUTING. Oh well, think of all the calories I'm saving eating a bowl of cereal in the morning.

Tomorrow I'm going to go to a friend's house maybe in the afternoon to watch the NFC Championship. Go Saints!

Slash Dot

When Google released its customizable home page some months ago, one of the news feeds I picked up on a lark was Slashdot (/.) "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." was the line that lured me in. It has become one of my favorite sources for interesting stuff.

For example, I learned today on Slashdot that the inventory of instant ramen noodles died at the age of 96. One of the best things about /. is the comments, which are ranked by participants on a scale of one to five in one of three categories: interesting, insightful, or funny. There is a 5-Interesting comment that talks about the geek wonders of ramen written by "perfessor multigeek" that's just excellent, and some 5-Funny references to the inventor (Ando Momofuko - what a GREAT name) being the earthly manifestation of the FSM sent to bring noodly goodness to the world.

Like my buddy and former co-blogger Ned Flanders wrote in his post about The Brick Testament, there's always a risk when you talk about something like this that it's SOOOOOOO last century, and everybody knows already. But I so enjoyed reading about Ramen noodles and their procrastinator inventor (didn't invent them until he was 48!) that I thought I should sing the praises of Slashdot. Besides, it lets me write a blog with lots of links.

Vacation's Over

We got back from our trip to Florida (no beach) Saturday night. Sunday was Sunday, and yesterday was just another day off, really. DH watched football last night, but that's about it for anything different. Mostly I surfed the internet. I'm so boring.

I did go grocery shopping yesterday, but it triggered a strong sense of malaise, followed by a pretty strong depressive episode. Thinking about guns and shiny knives and large doses of prescription drugs. But I managed to go to sleep and when I woke up this morning it was gone. Just a breakthrough. Thank goodness. It's been so long since I've had one I forgot that they can still happen.

Phoebe said some nice things about me in an e-mail yesterday that made me think: if I've helped so many people, why am I not rich? Why have no songs been written about me? I have not been the subject of an episode of This American Life, nor the subject of a documentary on PBS. And I have yet to be showered with gifts, or have a parade held in my honor (and I live in New Orleans, where "it's Saturday!" is a valid excuse for a parade). So really, how much can y'all love me?