Today, the Earth is very near to its position relative to the sun that it was on the day I was born. The Earth has mad thirty-three laps since then and to celebrate this occasion, I will be going home from work at a reasonable hour… for a change.

I was thinking about it this morning… at 12:30 AM… as I was driving home from work. “Happy Birthday! Wheeee.” For the last six weeks, I’ve been working retardedly long hours (~14 hours a day) and life is blurring all around me. I feel like the guy in that weird special effect, where he’s going in slow motion and all the people around him are buzzing around him at three times normal speed. Other than Sunday afternoon’s, I haven’t seen my wife for more than ten minutes at a time. I’ve missed numerous church events. And, having not exercised anything but my typing fingers in all that time, I’ve gained about 15 pounds. And, as an added bonus, half of the company is going to a funeral today so their all dressed in black and moping around.

But then, I got to thinking. This is definitely not my worst birthday ever. I’m financially comfortable. I’m relatively healthy. My wife is proving her metal by being very supportive even though she’s got lots of reasons to be grumpy (more on this later). And, even though it’s killing me, I really do enjoy my work.

On my fourth birthday, I got in the one and only fight I’ve ever had with my best friend Galyn. I ended up throwing a hot-wheels car at him for which I got spanked. That’ll but a damper on the party!

I spent my fifteenth birthday in I.S.S. (No, not the international space station. In school suspension.) for getting in a fight during Spanish class. That was pretty sucky.

But I’d have to say my absolute worst birthday ever was my thirteenth. Never mind the fact that I was thirteen, with all it’s acne and hormonal anguish. I was with my family visiting friends in Virginia. Those friends are very “granola”, if you know what I mean, and I spent the week suffering through Coca-Cola withdrawals and eating enough carrot sticks to make Bugs Bunny nauseous. Oh, and I came home with pneumonia! Bonus!!

What is your worst birthday memory?