I reached 40 years of being alive on July 3rd.

While this feels fairly unreal to me, I’m not really fretting it much since I never really had any expectations of what should be happening with my life at this point. If I’ve learned anything it’s that my life rarely, if ever, goes as planned.

Lala and our dear friends, Rob and Tyf, got me a Nook as a gift. Rob loaded with some books he knew I liked, plus a few books that he thought I’d dig that he liked. I instantly tracked down tons of books to put on it and treated it like an iPod. It was only afterwards that I realized that I should probably put new books on it rather than old favorites.

For the evening of my birthday, Lala planned a lovely “Cocktail Party” pub crawl for me in lovely downtown Eugene, in the “Barmuda Triangle.” I wore a snazzy, retro pistachio green suit that belonged to my ex-wife’s grandfather and was probably made in Hong Kong just for him. I was surprised and excited that it fit me again. Yay for regular exercise, I guess.

Here are Lala and I with Owen before we left him in the capable hands of Uncle Timmy.

We started at the Starlight Lounge and I was surprised at the people who showed up. Former coworkers that I hadn’t seen in years and friends that I see regularly and friend that I see rarely. It was short on the twitter people that I thought would want to do the fancy dress pub crawl.

In addition to free drinks, I was given gifts of freshly made cookies and old D&D modules that sparked lovely nostalgia. Thanks, Brian.

Holly Pet and I leaving the Starlight.

We moseyed on over to Jameson’s where a couple more friends showed up. We reminisced and drank more. It was great catching up with old friends. The strange table we sat around reminded me of something out of the milk bar from A Clockwork Orange.Unfortunately I didn’t think to take a picture of it.

I did get pics of Lala and Pet looking lovely and Joel, Brian and I looking sharp.

As we left Jameson’s we lost a few folks to weariness and/or drunkeness. We crossed the street to Davis’ and had more booze and fun. Somehow, I managed to pace myself just right and was never too drunk. I laughed and joked and danced there.

We ended the night at the Horsehead. Not the classiest joint, but good booze and great, greasy, late-night drunken food. At this point it was just Lala, Pet, Yook and her date. Lala and Pet chipped in and got this caricature of me done. Please note the bikini and contrasting manly body hair.