Today happens to be the birthday of a couple of people who have been important in my life. I’ll start with the present, and get to the past in a moment…

My Number One Internet Fanboy turns 34 today. Karel and I “met” online when he was Googling for taglines, and he found a .txt file of them that I had up on my website. He sent me a thank-you email, and I was delighted; we corresponded for many months before our first in-person meeting. That was several years ago; we’ve gone from casual online pals to very close friends (who also happened to have fallen in love). His mottos for living have deeply impacted my philosophies for the better, his geek-fu has saved my butt (and more importantly, my computer) many times, his common sense & honesty have straightened out my foolishness more than a few times, he’s enriched my life immensely, and he always makes me smile. I hope to be there to toast his birthday for many decades to come!

As for the past…

My only biological sibling turns 35 today. My mother tells an adorable (or horrifying, depending on your point-of-view) story about the first unsupervised interaction between her & I: my sister was born when I was 21 months old, and of course a toddler of that age may not quite understand the addition of a newborn into the family. My mother says that I was very stand-offish about the new baby for the first several weeks, and my mother hadn’t ever left us alone because she was worried that I might try to pick the baby up. One day, when my sister was about a month old, she stepped into the other room for a minute or two, leaving us alone for the first time. Then she heard the distinctive smack of skin hitting skin, and her new baby screaming bloody murder. She rushed back into the room to find a toddler-sized red handprint on the baby’s face, and me with an incredibly smug & satisfied smile on mine. Apparently, I had thought that the new baby was only visiting, and this was my reaction once it sunk in that Mommy wasn’t taking the baby back to wherever it had come from!

The rest of our childhood together was no less combative; she nearly drowned me, I broke her arm, and basically we’ve always gotten along like oil and water. We’re no friendlier as adults, and while we don’t have any sort of feud between us, neither of us has seen any point to actually communicating in the last several years. We simply have nothing in common, aside from genetics. I did send her an e-card for her birthday, and I hope she’s well & happy.

Back in more innocent days, we did sometimes have fun together: