Happy May 14




Of all the things Mark Zuckerberg has done to revolutionize the world where we live-- and this includes actual revolutions (Egypt, I'm looking in your direction)-- the best thing to come out of the whole Facebook thing has to be how we celebrate birthdays.

Used to be, you'd see friends and family in your immediate vicinity. There was probably a cake and candles, although I prefer pie or a nice banana pudding (thanks, Special K!). Maybe there were gifts.

I assume we all still do all of that too (or at least we did here at Little Blue last night and will do again at the New Hampshire Annex later today), but isn't it just the best feeling to wake up on a day that's supposed to be special and be greeted with dozens of messages from people you haven't seen in years wishing you happy?

As the years pass, birthdays become kind of a drag, anyway, I think. There's the sense, true or not, of increasingly limited choices and possibly impending doom. Once you start coping with gray hairs and various parts starting to sag, it's good to counterbalance that with one of the rewards of being a relatively decent human who has lived long enough to have access to social networking technology. Yes, we're getting older, but our friend lists are getting longer, and those birthday wishes come from a lot of different places and parts of your life. And if you're truly lucky, the wishes are coming from an assortment of truly extraordinary people.

One day out of the year, I get to feel the love from Greenwich Mean to Pacific Standard, so those would be my friends from living in the UK 14 years ago and my friends from graduate school 3 years ago. This morning I heard from a buddy from high school who used to try to explain quantum mechanics to me at track meets-- although truth be told, his time zone is a war zone and I'd rather be hearing from him out of Pacific Standard where he'd be with his family, but it still kind of made my day to remember that there was, in fact, a time when my hips and knees didn't creak and pop when I moved more than 3 miles per hour.

Well, that's not entirely true. I was never much of a runner.