Birthdays II

This is turning out to be a damn nice mellow birthday! My sweet wife, who is back east, had hidden two cool presents in the house for me. The dog, who goes to the vet in an hour, is looking better, so I'm less worried. Piano class was great, and things are starting to make sense in theory class. I have the one and only TV series I really like to look forward to tonight (you'll never guess: Friday Night Lights), tomorrow there are three back-to-back great Pac 10 football games to watch, one of which I'll listen to on the radio while I'm raking leaves (unless my damn neighbor is out with his power blower, a tool invented by the devil). I have energy to do a lot of writing this weekend as well and hope to start next week with both new projects, novel and splay, showing new momentum. I can't quite believe I'm still here, and I'll never get used to outliving my closest friends ... but I still dig the scene, as we used to say. The gods have been kind.

But don't outlive your oldest and closest friends. It sucks. You can't replace half a century of history with someone by meeting an interesting guy in a coffee shop. Not even close. What you do is count your blessings for having this kind of friendship (many don't), remember it fondly, and move on, alas alone.