twenty-two seconds to live

This will not be well-written, or even halfway fluid and readable.

Things are looking really up at work – not much to say at this point but it’s a very exciting time to work there!

Total Lunar eclipse tonight, I nerded it up and got some localized sky charts to make sure we could see it before waking up at 0330 for it.

Gonna smoke and nap a bit before moontime.

August 16th has always been quite a day.

In 1777, American forces defeated the British at the Battle of Bennington, then in 1863 the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Good times!

As for music, in 1954, Madonna was born. In 1962, Beatles drummer Pete Best was fired – just in time for Ringo Starr to replace him before the recording of Love Me Do. Then, in 1969, all the hippies in Woodstock, NY decided they had had just about enough and were all headed home by the next day. Great news all around.

Of course, Elvis died in 1977; but the first anniversary of that event would be overshadowed in 1978 by one of the greatest events to ever occur: your birth.

I cannot even begin to wrap my mind around the long and complicated chains of events that led to me meeting you, but one thing I will never fail to grasp is the extent to which I am extremely thankful that it happened.

All of the trials and tribulations of my life would be meaningless without you. When the final grand sum of my meager existence is taken, the only reason my ledger will be in the black is the fact that I shared it with you. It would be easy to make today a celebration of my own success and salvation, but it is honestly and truly about you.

You have made this world a more beautiful and wondrous place each and every day you have lived. You have touched the lives of people that will never know who you were, and brought a grace and awe to a world with a serious deficit of those things. Most of the 6-odd billion people on this tiny rock will live and die oblivious to what you do and who you are, but each and every day it is nothing more significant than my only true reason to wake up and carry on. And that, my love, is truly a reason to celebrate.

Don’t sweat the numbers – because something like this doesn’t use numbers, it uses words. Words like “forever.”

Happy Birthday!