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I like receiving birthday cards. Yesterday I got five cards from friends and family.

I've actually kept every single card (and letter) I've received for birthdays, holidays, and special events, since my late teens or early twenties. It's amounted to a couple of shoe boxes worth of paper, and that's still less volume than the number of comic books I have stored away at my parents' house from when I was a teenage collector. But unlike comics, which really only have value in my thinking that one day they'll be worth money, a card has a personality attached to it. Getting one is a nice little token of someone thinking about you, and even if they aren't particularly such a close friend, the card and the respective giver is usually attached to some part of your life that was important in one way or another. A few years ago I flipped through some of the cards in the boxes and came across a Christmas card with a name on it that I didn't immediately recognize. It came to me hours later: she was one of five Americans and Canadians that I lived with in London in December of 1991. She was from Montana, I remember, and was a very positive, cheery girl. I only lived with those folks for about a month, in a basement flat in West Kensington, but it was amazing the rich memories that were triggered by just looking at a name on a card. Letters, of course, are even more personal, but it's been years since I received one, and I don't keep e-mails in the same way.

I have no doubt that I'll feel the same way about the names on the cards I look at in a few years... the days with that New York running club, the Canadians in NYC, and my friends from Jersey. Remembering my Birthday at the Beer Garden in Queens, trying to stay out until midnight to celebrate my real birthday with the last few that hung on that long.

And I did, just barely, and then headed out with them at 12:20 AM. One day it'll all be just a good memory.

* * *

And with that, I feel like I'm finally done with the Beer Garden. It's gotten too trendy, too crowded, and the waiting-in-line thing in order to sit casually outside with a beer is just too much for me. I actually felt sorry that I picked the place, with some friends waiting for an hour to get in. That's a pretty selfish way to spend a birthday. I need a new favourite place to enjoy a cool one with friends.

Today, the 15th, was my actual birthday. It's also National Ice Cream Day, FYI, so really, can it get any better than that?!

Anyway, amazingly, I was up at 8:45 AM. I felt tired though, so after sending a few e-mails and doing a few minor chores, I went back to bed for another hour and a half. I got the Mom and Dad call at noon, right on schedule, and we chatted for almost 20 minutes, which is longer than usual. I got a few more birthday e-mails and online greetings and send a thank you to my friends for coming out last night, and an apology to the ones for whom the wait was too much. From there I headed down to Union Square. I treated myself to a little b-day late-lunch at a diner and headed into work for a few hours, and then back uptown to do some grocery shopping before heading home.

I was supposed to get together with a friend for dinner, but he left me a message saying he couldn't make it and would have to give me a rain check.

So that's basically my birthday. Quiet and solo, but that's okay. Actually, that's pretty representative of my life, so it seems to be a fitting way to spend the day.

I'll end it, though, on a more adventurous note: a couple of friends and a movie. That would be me, Sam Adams, and Jason Bourne. And ice cream, of course.

Happy Birthday to me.

It's Party Time! (No, really this time...)

I'm at home alone on a Friday night, typing in my blog. I'm such a partier.

It's just as well. It's Friday the 13th, and I'd probably go out tonight and get killed in some East Harlem gang war, and all my guests tomorrow would be pissed at me for not showing up.

So I do plan to make up for my lack of carousing tomorrow night, at my Bohemian Hall Blowout. At the moment I have 72 confirmed attendees, 15 maybes, and 27 who haven't replied yet. And I've already heard from a bunch of the latter two groups that said they'll actually be there (the eternal mystery to me is how anyone can't click yes and submit. It seems pretty easy to do, but maybe I overestimate the abilities of some of my friends. Whatever.). so from my perspective, I could have 80+ people coming. Cool.

This is not what I expected, mind you. I felt optimistic in estimating about 40 guests. What happened to summer vacations, and the "I don't want to leave Manhattan" crowd?? But so many are coming out. I don't know why. It's Queens, you know, guys. It really is a trek to get out there. Maybe a lot of people will bail.

Not that I want them to, mind you. I'm just not one to get my hopes up when it comes to throwing a party. The beer garden is huge, and can accommodate nearly a thousand people (find a place like that in Manhattan!). Unfortunately though, they won't reserve for guests. It's all first come; first served, so there may be a scarcity of seating. I am hoping people come and go throughout the afternoon/evening/night, so that not the whole bunch is there at the same time, and I get to chat with lots of friends. Two friends of mine are bringing their kids in the afternoon at 4 PM (kids allowed until 9 PM in the beer garden, FYI), and it already looks like there's a second shift coming between 7 & 8. So I guess the party will be PG in the afternoon, and R-rated in the evening. Maybe NC-17 if we're really lucky. Or if I'm really lucky, anyway. Heehee.

I'm not as party crazy as I was last year about the birthday thing. This year, I just see it as an excuse to get friends together. After last year's extravaganza, I actually wasn't going to do another birthday thing until the big four-oh. However, I realised that I always wanted to have a celebration at Bohemian Hall, and there's a good chance of me getting tossed out of this country before that happens if I wait a few more years. So I figured better sooner than later. And whereas last year I split my groups up into smaller events, this year I just kept it simple and invited pretty much everybody for one night.

And on that note, if you're reading this and weren't on the official evite, consider this your invitation. See you there.

Mickey 4.0

So I'm sitting here watching a movie, and Medley goes crazy, and starts head-butting (or so it seems) the baseboard heater again.

Yep, same old story: she comes out with a mouse.

This makes for mouse #4, coming to the close of my first year in this apartment. I'm not too content with that statistic: I'm not particularly happy with averaging one mouse every three months. I suppose at least if the cat was killing them, I could live with that.

But she's not. Truth be told, I really want to nickname her Deadly Medley, but she's just not living up to that label.

As was the case last time, she decided that the mouse was going to be her new toy. She dropped it in the middle of the floor and started batting it around. At least this time I was coherent enough that I ran to the kitchen to find something to trap the thing under. First I grabbed the lid to a sauce pan, and then paused, looked at it, and thought "Ewww! Gross!" I put it down, grabbed a coffee can instead, and popped back into the other room.

Medley was still playing. I tried to get her to drop the mouse in a place where I could scoop it up. Instead she dropped it next to my dresser, and it scurried underneath, where it got cornered between a storage bin and the wall, and it just sat there. I retrieved a pair of pliers from a drawer. Holding Medley back with one hand, I used the pliers to pick the mouse up by the tail, dropped him into the can and closed the lid. I cut a couple little air holes in it with a utility knife.

But now what? Am I supposed ot kill it? Do I release it, set it free to continue to infest the city? It is a pest, right? Not like I can keep it as a pet. But how do I dispose of it? And how do I get to my coffee with the mouse in there? (Okay, I'm kidding about that last thing.)

But really, what do I do?