To Me, on my 29th Birthday

So here it is. Another year gone by, and quite a milestone this year will be. The end of the 20s! The predawn of Middle Age. The twilight of Youth. An epoch of time that shall not be seen again.

What a bunch of melodramatic crap...

But as I sit here at work, deep in the bowels of the mega-evil Insurance Conglomerate, I feel compelled to indulge in a moment of pensive introspection. Twenty-nine years is not a terribly long time in the grand temporal scheme of things, but I'll ramble off a few of the tremendous things that have happened during my life:

• The American Bicentennial - July 4, 1976 (ok so I don't actually remember this one)
• Pope John Paul II was elected Pope
• President Ronald Reagan was shot
• Pope John Paul II was shot
• John Lennon was shot and killed
• The Space Shuttle program began
• The first American woman astronaut flew into space (Sally Ride)
• Personal computers became a common household item
• VCRs hit the mainstream
• CDs were invented
• Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just after liftoff
• Cell phones were invented
• Digital cameras were invented
• Digital watches became popular (LOL)
• The Branch Davidian Compound in Waco, TX - David Koresh
• The Oklahoma City Bombing - Timothy McVeigh
• September 11, 2001 - Osama Bin Ladden
• Two wars in Iraq - Saddam Hussein
• The explosion of the World Wide Web
• The .COM era of business
• Space Shuttle Columbia destroyed during reentry
• MP3s & iPods
• Ronald Reagan died
• Pope John Paul II died
• I graduated from college
• Got a job
• Got laid off
• Got another job
• Started a blog
• Wrote about meaningless stuff for your amusement.

That just about sums it up I think. Except for one big caveat. In the paltry amount of time that I've muddled through on this tiny blue-green planet, I wouldn't have had nearly as much success as I have had it not been for the support of my family and friends. So on this auspicious day, I'm sending out a big birthday Thank You! to the four corners of the world and all points in between. To the cherished people in my life, on my 29th birthday... I wouldn't be here without you.

Now let's get this whole Youth thing out of the way and get onto the main course.