Happy birthday to us

When I wrote this post a couple of hours ago it was still Sunday. Then my IP went offline. After many attempts, resets and reboots I went to bed. But I couldn't breathe through my nose (too much of something today, maybe a sneaky additive), so got up an hour later to try again. And here we are. It's enormously frustrating to be kicked out of paradise offline and not be able to complain about it online.

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Had the traditional family October birthday do today, to celebrate a 17th, a 39th, a 47th and a 73rd. And for bonus Libran points, my sister-in-law also has a birthday this week.

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How I spent my birthday last year

This is my lj post from my birthday last year: http://stephbg.livejournal.com/272805.html

That was the last time I saw my brother Dave alive. He passed away the next morning while I was en route to the hospital.

A year later, and I'm a year older, but he remains the same age: a hair's breadth from 50. This means, rather to my surprise, that one of the absolutes of my universe has failed. Dave used to be 12 years older than me. You can't mess with birth order. But now I've moved on and he hasn't, he's only 11 years older. In time I'll catch up and then pass him. Big Brother may one day become Little Brother.

Time is such a strange thing. I miss him so.

It also makes a strange kind of sense, because his plan was to travel through the universe at presumably relativistic speeds. I wonder how old I'll be before he comes back to visit?

It's got rhythm, otherwise your guess is as good as mine

.

A misanthropic antelope
drank a cup of tea.
While pondering the universe,
he was all at sea.
"Why are we here?" he thought to self,
while searching for a bite.
"And who made all those ugly people
clogging up my sight?"