Happy, happy birthday to me*

I'm feeling thankful for the small things today. Or yesterday, actually.

Yesterday was my birthday, never mind how many years I was celebrating. (Hint: I've now reached the legal drinking age, twice.) I'm usually impossible to shop for, especially after my wife Julie already hit the gift jackpot with the iPod she gave me two years ago and the laptop last year. My general take on gifts is that there's really nothing I need, and if I wanted something badly enough I'd just buy it for myself and not wait until my birthday for it. So this year I insisted that no gifts were necessary.

So instead, I indulged myself by taking the day off from work. Then I sat in my easy chair and surfed the web for far too many hours, most of them with my daughter Maddie charmingly hovering nearby. Then in mid-afternoon we were off to Dan's Candies for the autumn tradition of caramel apples, followed by stops at the new digs of our local used book store Book Market (where I gleefully picked up Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts/The Day of the Locust, Mark Costello's The Murphy Stories and Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses) and B&N (where I picked up the summer issue of Bookforum - not sure why it was still on the shelf, with the fall issue now being out). Back at home, we had excellent carryout from Fat Terry's Rib Crib and an Eli's cheesecake for my birthday dessert.

A wonderful day all around. Julie kept saying it didn't seem like it was an exciting birthday for me, but it was exactly the way I wanted it.

(*Which, of course, refers to this.)