Another year, another birthday gone by.  I considered this a “milestone” birthday at forty-five, as it puts me on the downhill slide to fifty.  Most people guess me at around 58 anyway so it doesn’t really matter.  For the big event, I was secretly hoping to spend my day sitting in a small cubicle staring at a monitor.  What do you know, I got my birthday wish, just going to show that dreams do come true.  In addition to this exciting afternoon, I got some nice gifts too.  Besides lots of nice well-wishes on good ol’ Facebook, my Mom and Donette’s parents went together and got me a new fork for my bicycle.  (They do not know this, but they did;  Thank you!)  It has been brought to my attention by a few different people that my current fork (the part that holds the front wheel on) is not exactly, well, “safe.”  I’ve been intending to replace it all year, but a new one is just a bit pricey.  I guess I should specify, the new carbon-fiber one that I want is just a bit pricey.  I could get a considerably cheaper one, but I think everyone would agree that it’s better to wipe out in a spectacular fiery crash than to be seen riding around town on an alloy fork.  Makes sense to me.  From myself, I got a  USB TV tuner for my home theater PC.  This little toy goes back to our recent unplugging of the cable TV.  I don’t remember if I’ve rambled about this before, but our plan was to hook up an antenna and just watch local TV stations.  Well, as it turned out neither of our TV’s have built-in tuners, effectively wiping out this idea.  So this little gadget fixes that problem, as well as giving me a DVR and some other cool little features.

For my birthday dinner, Donette took me out to Plaza III.  I haven’t been to this fancy-schmancy place in quite a while;  High School prom I believe was the last occasion.  Took me that long to save up enough money to eat there again.  Heck I probably spent more at prom, because this time we had a coupon.  Seriously.  I used to feel a bit funny using a coupon at places like that, but I think I’m getting over it.  Donette had the prime rib and I had a strip steak, both of which were awesome, then we finished things off with a slab of strawberry cheesecake.  While I will continue to maintain that no dinner on earth is worth those prices, it sure was delicious.  After dinner we walked over to Brio and had a cup of coffee, then headed back home, as it was well after 9:00 and the old man had to get to bed.