Ups and downs

A vast improvement.  Or, "Avast!  Improvement!"

It's been a roller-coaster few days in the Good Plates house-hold.  A birthday dinner with my Dad for the first time in a very long time, some housework and a pretty cruisy Mothers' Day.  But the highlights were watching our youngest minion make a breakthrough at karate and building a better wardrobe.  The lowlight was definitely responding to the realisation that one of our dogs had eaten a lot of rat poison.

Secrets and milestones

The Great Orion Nebula, M42

Among the books which have made a lasting impression on me are the Hitch Hiker’s Guide novels by Douglas Adams. While certainly not the first to combine science fiction and humour, these stories were so memorable and popular that Adams was compelled to make a lot of what he wrote subsequently either an extension or a reinterpretation of them. I’m not sure whether I would be happy being the victim of such success or whether I’d find it creatively confining.

Anyway, if you know that I’m a fan of this material, and have some familiarity with it yourself, it should not be surprising that the prospect of turning 42 years old tomorrow has me slightly bemused.

I can't shake the sense that it's filled with hidden meaning, that it's somehow special.  Indeed, will I wake up tomorrow somehow magically knowing the great question of life, the universe and everything, thus rendering the answer "42" meaningful?

Facebook birthday wishes

I’m in two minds about this.  Facebook reminds me about friends’ birthdays way more effectively than anything else in my life, giving me the opportunity to wish a happy birthday to people whose birthdays I would normally miss.  On the other hand, the ease with which one can wish a friend happy birthday by leaving message on their Facebook wall renders the wish comparatively meaningless.  I mean, you don’t have to go to a lot of effort, and in the end it’s just characters on a display, rather than a voice on the phone or a handwritten wish in a card sent through the mail.

I know that, on my own birthday, I quite enjoy looking through all the messages on my wall, and it does give a little boost to one’s self-worth.  But it just seems too easy to punch a few keys and think “there, I’ve done something nice today”.

Whatever, it won’t stop me trying to think up something appropriate or witty to write on peoples’ walls, but I’ll still feel guilty about not being able to get better organised all the time!