Problems are for Solving

Well it’s my birthday, too, yeah.
[insert guitars here]

It is a new era.

Today was my first birthday since starting a facebook account. And because I was non-private enough (I did consider this btw) to allow my birthday to be “public” for my facebook friends, they all knew.

And so today my wall on facebook was plastered with birthday greetings from people around the world who I know, most of whom I’ve actually met IRL.

This is a blessing, to be sure. Facebook (and other tools like it) can allow us to be more involved in the lives of people we see infrequently. I have been glad for the reminders of birthdays, all of which never would have made it into my MS Outlook Calendar. I have been glad for the opportunities to wish well to friends that I don’t see (as far away as Korea!) well on the anniversary of his/her birth.

I am also glad that not all of my FB friends (not to be confused with my *real life* friends, though there is significant crossover) wished me happy birthday. At that point it would have felt like FB greetings on the birthday is somehow socially obligatory, which would make all of the greetings I received worth less somehow.

Technology can be a wonderful thing, used wisely. I pray that I will learn greater wisdom in my own use of it as I enter my 40th year.

To those of you, my wife and family especially, that made this a wonderful day: thank you. I do appreciate it. It is nice to be loved, and nice on those occasions where that love is most felt.

Today is Theresa’s birthday. The Big 34. Yep. I married a younger woman. She wasn’t even 21 yet when we got married.

Theresa loves to learn. She devours books about topics that would bore the socks off me. And then she tells me about what she read and makes it interesting. Topics like the management of waste water for cities and soil conservation. I’m serious.

And today I am very thankful and glad to be married. And very thankful that after 13+ years she continues to put up with me.

Happy Birthday, my love. You continue to be my best friend and the one I most look forward to coming home to. Thank you for these years of marriage and for giving our children your love for learning new things. May you never cease to love to learn, and may we continue in our endeavors to learn to love.

Ok.

So last night Theresa and I go over to Seth’s to have ice cream and do the whole Wii thing. This is a first for me, you understand. Busy morning so I only have three things to say:

1. Due to the help of others, my Mii is scary realistic like me.

2. I’m glad we don’t have a Wii

3. I’m glad Seth does.

that George W. Bush, Nancy Pelosi, and Charles Manson all drink water? I think there’s some kind of vast, murderous conspiracy going on . . .

Guilt by association is back en vogue!

I know people who voted for Ron Paul. You know, the Ron Paul who was endorsed by Rolling Stone because he’s against the war and for the legalization of recreational pharmaceuticals? Some prostitutes and racists voted for Ron Paul, too. Therefore the people I know who voted for Congressman Paul must be racist adulterers, right?

I also know people who voted for John McCain. Senator McCain sponsored a bill that limits free speech. He voted for taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cell research. Therefore those people must be pro-choice, anti-baby and fascists who want to limit free speech, right?

The internet is a wonderful invention (thank you Al Gore!) but it’s also a cesspool. If you know somebody, don’t believe what you read on the internet about them–ask them face to face and give them some benefit of doubt if you’re not willing to bring it up to them personally. And if you read something about me on the internet, it might be true. But then I know people who are racist adulterous freespeech hating, baby hating fascists so I must be one too.

If you’re my friend I’ll ask you about yourself and generally trust what you say rather than what people who don’t like you say. And I’ll do that no matter whether you voted for Ron Paul, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Barack Obama or whatever. I’d like to hope my friends would do the same for me.

Oh, and by the way. I’m a sinner. And so are you and all my friends. And somewhere there’s a few things written about sin and what we do about it. Now where was that book…. oh right. It’s the Bible.