Tag: birthdays

Toasting the Professor

To celebrate Tolkien’s twelfty-eighth (128th) birthday on 3 January 2020, The Tolkien Society invites all Tolkien fans to raise a toast to the Professor #TolkienBirthdayToast.

The Tolkien Society of Kansas Society will gather at Catch 22 Sports Bar & Grill in Liberty, Missouri at 7:00 pm to kick off our “Toast to the Professor” tradition!

Normally we would meet at Inklings’ Books and Coffee Shoppe for this event, but as Inklings’ has moved to Liberty and is currently under renovation, we will meet at Catch 22 and then take a brief tour of the new Inklings’ space.

The official toast occurs at 9:00 pm. Remember, if you can’t join us in person, simply raise a glass of your preferred beverage at precisely 9:00 pm and say, “The Professor!” and use the hashtag #TolkienBirthdayToast to share on your preferred social media platform.

Please Note: Catch 22 does not accept reservations. If for some reason we are inundated with hobbits, we may need to change venues. Any changes will be announced on our Facebook page as well as via Twitter.

@TolkienKC

5*11

Five 11s

Eleven 5s

A half century and a half decade.

Two score plus a half score plus a quarter score years.

I can’t and never could drive fifty-five.

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I was almost five when Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

Disappointed a woman hasn’t walked there yet.

I am starting to experience the opposite of time dilation.

Thanks to everyone who wished me well on my natal day.

On the Eve of Day Eighteen Thousand Nine Hundred Ninety-Three

Today is my last day of my 51st year on this planet.  It’s been a quiet day.  I woke at my usual time of five o’clock in the morning, before sunrise.  I didn’t walk either dog this morning.  I did take several closeups of Porthos, despite his not wanting to hold still or look at the camera.  Afterwards, I started reading my next book club read and wrote a review on a television series I finished watching on day 18,991.

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Portrait of Porthos (10/1/16)

I did walk up the hill to the Lansing Community Library to volunteer for a couple of hours at the circulation desk.  I do this almost every Saturday and have for most of this past year.  On the return trip, I picked up my mail and found two birthday cards, one from my aunt and uncle and one from a long time friend who now lives back east in Virginia.

Later, I’ll make a run to the grocery store and maybe finish mowing the side yard.  I’ll leave the back yard mowing for tomorrow or Monday.  I’m on call for work this weekend and have had only one call from the help desk, which I took care of earlier this afternoon.  I might be on call, but I decided to take Monday off to make my birthday weekend a three day event.  And besides, I don’t do Mondays this time of year.  Whatever vacation I have left by this time of the year goes to taking off every available Monday until New Year’s Eve.  Use it or lose it.

Tomorrow, for my birthday ‘treat’ I’m dragging my husband and my dad to the Nelson-Atkins Art Gallery for the last day of their exhibit of ancient Roman luxury items.  The return trip home will involve a stop at Olive Garden.

Halfway through day 18, 992.

Probably a good time to take a nap.

My Son Turns Thirty

I should have scheduled this post to publish just after two o’clock this afternoon, which would have been thirty years to the hour marking the birth of Derek Randall Moss.  But, I couldn’t wait that long to welcome my son to his third decade.

As you can surmise, this blog post will be a trip down memory lane for me.  And unfortunately I don’t have many photos of Derek from his first decade.  It was the age of film cameras and I owned a very cheap almost disposable 35 mm camera that I took a few snapshots with.  I later scanned a few of them to create digital copies, but many of them still languish in shoe boxes in the storage room.  Oddly, I have more video footage of both kids on old mini-VHS than I do still photos.  At least until we reach the mid-90s when digital photography really started taking off.

First Photo taken of Derek (9 Feb 1986)
First Photo taken of Derek (9 Feb 1986)

I won’t go into the gory details but some interesting trivia from the night before.  Continue reading “My Son Turns Thirty”

Year 51 Day 1

Yep. It’ my birthday.

I have a busy weekend planned and took Monday off to recover.

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Today (Friday) I’m off over lunch to my First Friday book club at the Westport Branch of the Kansas City Public Library.  This past month Between the Lines read The 100 Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson.  I’m listening to it (still) and probably won’t finish it until later next week.  But it has been a funny read thus far.  I’m looking forward to hearing what the other members of the book group thought of this interesting centenarian’s adventure.

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Saturday night is my final night of the year as a member of the ASKC Team Two volunteers who help visitors during our Powell Observatory public night.  Come on down for some fantastic star gazing after sunset Saturday night.

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Sunday afternoon my hubby’s taking me to see the movie The Martian.  I read that book over a year ago a and thought it very good read.  I’m looking forward to the movie.

Happy Birthday Aunt Jan and C.S. Lewis!

“Happy Birthday” to my Aunt Jan in Ohio.  She’s shown between her two older brothers in the photo below taken a couple of years ago at my dad’s 70th birthday bash:

Dan, Jan and Ron (Nov 2012)
Dan, Jan and Ron (Nov 2012)

Incidentally, all of the above are born in the same month — November — as is my husband and my daughter-in-law.  I’ve blogged about this before.  Here’s a photo from their early days (circa 1953):

Dan, Jan and Ron (circa 1953)
Dan, Jan and Ron (circa 1953)

I have many fond memories of my Aunt Jan.  I remembering spending a summer or part of a summer with my grandparents (her mother and father) in St. Paul, Minnesota, when I was about six (circa 1970) and Jan was still in college (she was probably about 20). 
Continue reading “Happy Birthday Aunt Jan and C.S. Lewis!”

18.263k days or .5c yrs

MyBabyPhoto64
Me (late 1964)

Good morning!

And Happy Birthday to myself.  I’ve crossed over.  I’ve reached another dreaded milestone.  Today is the first day of my fifth decade.

To make myself feel better about this dubious event, I’ve reverted to two of my favorite past times:  math and astronomy.

I decided to calculate how many days I’ve been breathing air on Earth.  For that I had to find a date calculator.  Plugging in the relevant date (today in 1964 and 2014), the following results popped up:

From and including: Friday, October 2, 1964
To and including: Thursday, October 2, 2014
Result: 18,263 days

It is 18,263 days from the start date to the end date, end date included

Or 50 years, 1 day including the end date

Alternative time units 18,263 days can be converted to one of these units:

1,577,923,200 seconds
26,298,720 minutes
438,312 hours
18,263 days
2609 weeks

In addition, the Earth is travelling through space, via the Milky Way, at the incredible speed of 3,728.23 mps.  Roughly, the Earth has moved 5.88286061194e+12 miles since I was born, give or take a few.  That equates to approximately 63,256.57 astronomical units.  A rolling stone gathers no moss . . .

And the .5c I included in the title of this post?  No, I’m not travelling at half the speed of  light (except in my dreams).  I’m merely reflecting upon reaching my half century mark.

I decided to make a four day weekend out of this auspicious occasion so I’m relaxing at home, reading and doing other none stressful activities.  No parties (that I know of) and no surprises.  Just Terry, me and the dogs hanging out.

Just another day in the neighborhood.  Eighteen thousand two hundred sixty-three and counting.

Birthday Bonanza

I scramble every year during this second week of November.  When I was a kid, I only had to remember that my dad’s birthday was the 18th.  Then, as I got older, approaching my adolescence, I added my uncle (my father’s younger brother) on the 17th.  Yes, that’s right, one day before my dad.  They are separated by four years minus one day.  Also, their youngest sibling, my aunt, falls in November, but thankfully it’s after Thanksgiving.

I left home and went off to college in Wichita, where I met my future husband (thirty years ago this past September).  I won’t share that story in this post, as it’s a poorly kept secret among close relatives and friends.  I shouldn’t have been surprised though to discover that his birthday falls on November 14th, four days before my dad.

Continue reading “Birthday Bonanza”