The Ink-Pot and the Palette

I read yesterday that Flickr is about to change its retention policies, so I went there for the first time in quite a while to plan a kind of general rescue of my old photos.

The very earliest one was dated 2005, and corresponds to one of the first posts I ever made on LJ. Let's see if I can remember how to attach a photo to a DW post, because it's been a while since I had to actually write HTML to do that.


Okay. Here it is. I went out on my lunch hour one day in 2005 with an early digital camera (maximum image size 600 px wide), and thought this bus ad was funny enough to make a LiveJournal post. I was just getting the hang of even how to think about blogging, a word which etymonline.com tells me did exist by 2005.

So here we are, thirteen years later. I was an Old then and have gotten no less Old, of course, relative to internet people or in absolute terms. I'm 63 today.

Since 2005 I have retired from the job I took a lunch break from that day. The building I worked in for much of my career--behind and to the right of me as I took that photo--is under massive earthquake-proofing these days, basically an empty shell of bullshit postmodern architecture plus a famous statue, while all its 3000 denizens work in rented spaces around the downtown area. I don't get downtown anymore, so I haven't seen it. 

I've also written and published a novel and become a professional editor. I've built myself a little recording studio and become part of a podcast, the Story Grid Editor Roundtable, a group show of which my first solo episode just posted today.


So hello to all who've been more loyal to the DW/LJ platform than I have, and to those returning because of the impending Tumblr diaspora. And happy birthday to me.

I know I'm 45 minutes early, but I want to be the first to wish a very happy birthday to ravurian, whose presence in my life is among my chiefest joys.

Peace and love to you, my friend.

Happy birthday, executrix. You're one of the kindest, wittiest, most generous people on LJ/DW, and I'm proud to call you a friend.

I hope the day is lovely for you.

Hi everyone. It's my birthday! Which, after 57 previous ones, isn't all that big a deal. But I took the day off work, had acupuncture, went out to breakfast-for-lunch, got my nails done, and came home in the very cold December evening to eat really rather a lot of French chocolate.

I was dreadfully sick last week--like bedridden-and-housebound for six days, miss-Thanksgiving-dinner level sick. It was mostly just the worst cold in the world, I think. At the nadir of it I ruptured an eardrum and had conjunctivitis in both eyes, so I was half-deaf and half-blind and it was generally awful. (Bragg's raw apple cider vinegar, diluted on a cotton pad and wiped along the lower lid, stings like hell but makes short work of the pinkeye, by the way.)

Long story short, I'm a million percent better now, though still a bit hearing impaired in the one ear. Back to breathing, sleeping, and riding my bike.


Birthday nails

Hardly any job left in my life now:

Retirement countdown

Four years! Wow! That's getting to be positively venerable in internet time. Congratulations, and long may you prosper, Dreamwidth.

Dear ravurian:

Happy birthday to one of my favorite people in this or any alternate universe. May all your ever afters be happy.

Much love,
darkemeralds
xx

( What a splendid birthday! )

Not exactly a party animal, I know (well, I never was), but I had a lovely, lovely day from start to finish, and I hope everybody else's birthdays will always be as nice as mine was yesterday.

Happy belated birthdays to two of my favorite friends in Journal World.

roxymissrose: Bless you for making me laugh time and again with your great posts! I know you've been going through a tough time lately, and you're in my thoughts and my hopes for brighter days to come. ♥

pandarus: You gave me the best gift anyone could give, a wider audience for my writing, and the joy of your brilliant podfic thereof. ♥

Today is my mom's 80th birthday. I'm one lucky Baby Boomer, because a) I have no kids and b) my still-living mother is still very much living--healthy, independent, active and in full possession of all faculties, and resident in a nice condo about a mile and half from me. (She occasionally goes to a doctor, where, when they ask her what medications she's on and she says "None," they say, "No, really, what medications are you on?" and it repeats a few times before they get it.)

We had a family birthday party this evening--flourless chocolate cake made by my sis (since I'm wheat-free) and homemade ice cream (made by me--vanilla and mocha, pretty good), same as every family birthday, because she didn't want anything special, or any gifts. We did give her a nice big bunch of tulips.

There is no way not to view these kinds of days as numbered, and I'm grateful for every one of them. Happy birthday, Mom.

Jim Beaver posted on his Facebook last night that he was going to karaoke for a friend's birthday. Today is Jared Padalecki's birthday. The following proceeded from a conversation with owzers on this juxtaposition of events.

Title: You Can Tell Everybody
Rating: General
Warnings: Schmoop. Songs! One of 'em. The other one.
Length: 2000 words

( You Can Tell Everybody: a little J2 schmoop for Jared's birthday. )