What did the general say to his troops?

Well I haven't written in a while, not due to lack of time mind you, just a lack of inspiration. Today I am inspired for it is my birthday and despite the slightly depressing fact that I am now one year closer to my inevitable but gloriously heroic death, I find little ways to celebrate.

All the normal things I enjoy, like messages from family and friends. People who you never talk to calling you up and just saying hello. While those things are pleasant its the weird things about a day like this that I enjoy

Like checking your email and getting tons of messages from forum administrators wishing to congratulate you on not getting killed for another year. All using automated systems to send out generic messages of good tides. You sift though each one as you look for one genouine email. Finding long gone forums and websites annual greetings still being sent out even though the site no longer exists. Finding messages from places you have long since quit visiting either due to lack of interest or the fact that third graders were taking over pretending to be twenty year old women. It really is a small part of my birthday I do enjoy.

Another of my favorite rituals of my birthday is not a cake, candles or spankings, but the one time a year I really indulge my carnal desire to eat meat. Going out and buying the biggest steak I can or can afford and savoring its every last bite with a room full of friends doing the same.

And last but not least is the period after the festivities are over where I watch the clock like a hawk till midnight trying to find ways to recapture my younger days and find ways to make this birthday feel like all those I had as a child. Checking the clock every five minutes and thinking only four more hours of my birthday left. Knowing that in four hours it will go from my birthday to Monday. And I will have to wait an entire year to perform the ritual again.