Lazy Blogging (again)

Here's a meme, shamelessly stolen from this post at Debi's place. Because I'm too lazy to write one of my typically rambling posts this morning.

1) Go to Wikipedia.
2) In the search box, type your birth month and day but not the year.
3) List three events that happened on your birthday.
4) List two important birthdays and one death.
5) One holiday or observance (if any).

I've blogged about my birthday before, so for even more laziness, some of these answers are recycled.

Events
1356 - English defeat the French at the Battle of Poitiers, because they think they own France.
1778 - The Continental Congress passes the first budget of the United States. And they've been in debt ever since.
1944 - Armistice between Finland and Soviet Union signed (End of the Continuation War). They had their own private war?

There are so many events worth mentioning... Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid starting their career together (1900), the US banning Charlie Chaplin's re-entry (1952), their first underground nuclear test (1956), the Wheel of Fortune game show being created (1983). But here are a couple more notable ones:

Special Mention - Events (coolness category)
1970 - The first Glastonbury Festival is held. Mud, music, mud, and non-prescription pharmaceuticals. And mud.

Special Mention - Events (silly category)
1959 - Nikita Khrushchev is barred from visiting Disneyland. That communist bastard.

Birthdays
Well, Ferry Porsche obviously, in 1909, links to the Nazi Party notwithstanding. The second, American Actor Adam West. He's the real Batman, you know.

Other candidates: Jeremy Irons, Lol Creme, Twiggy, and Nile Rodgers.

Death
I think I'll have to go with Orville Redenbacher (1995), humorously described in Wikipedia's list as an "American botanist and businessman".

Observance
There can be only one. Talk Like A Pirate Day, of course. Although I gave serious consideration to the sixth day of the Eleusinian Mysteries, St. Kitts and Nevis Independence Day, and Chilean Armed Forces Day too.

So there you go. September the 19th. Send me presents.

Thrashed to Pieces

Two hours at Chuck E. Cheese on a Saturday night will do that to you. Especially after a full day of Junior Ricardipus wrangling while Mrs. Ricardipus hid out at home, writing her last essay of the term.

Oh, the fun... including:

- taking Junior Ricardipus #2 to a gymnastics lesson, with JR#1 in tow
- doing homework for most of an hour with JR1 during said lesson
- picking up lunch on the way home
- taking JR2 to her swimming lesson later in the afternoon
- and then hauling both JRs to the aforementioned cheesy establishment for a full-on barrage of noise, chaos and general birthday party anarchy.

At the end of it all, I felt like I'd been beaten with a stick. I don't know how Mrs. Ricardipus does this kind of thing on a regular basis, I really don't.


P.S. The last time I was at a Chuck E. Cheese was circa 1984 in Rochester, New York, on a school trip. I didn't like the place then, either.

They promised me there'd be a Chinook

And once again, as seems to happen more frequently than I would like, it's a Junior Ricardipus's birthday and I'm traveling. But this time, it's JR#1 turning seven and I'm in Calgary. That's Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Where it's cold. At this time of year.

Ok, ok, it's not actually as cold as you might think - barely colder than where I live, which is just north of Toronto, more or less. And like last time I was in this airport, it's possible to see the Rocky Mountains from the airport, when the cloud and fog lift. It would still take you a few hours to drive there, though... they're big, they're on the horizon, and they're still far, far away.

So, this city... say it with me: COW-GLA-REE. Emphasis on the bovine. This ain't your old-world Cagliari namesake, folks. They have airport greeters in stetsons. Really. However, it's comforting that the airport hotel is just as boring as all other airport hotels, at least the ones I've experienced. As fun as the proverbial barrel of monkeys. Viz:

I also am scared by this. Perhaps it's time I got some sleep.

40

Well, it seems my little September the 19th mystery was either too obscure, or too boring, for a lot of people.

In case you missed it, and in case you care, the answer was "40". As in the title of the song. As in the difference between 2007 and 1967, the year Ricardipus started busting funky moves and making snide remarks. As in the reason it has become necessary to modify my profile so that it no longer reads "slightly under 40 blah blah blah".

Anyway, thanks to those who figured it out (with generous hinting). Oddly enough, it was Tilly who got it first - a blogger I remember hearing of years ago when I first started reading Zoe's blog, but whose blog I'd completely lost touch with. Hi, Tilly *waves*.

So, now that I'm officially Over The Hill™, I can look back on things and realize that my completely selfish and useless goal of owning an objectionably expensive and gas-guzzling sports car is likely never going to happen... shame really, 'cos they've got an awful lot of them for sale at this website I discovered. Or maybe I could borrow the shiny, red Ferrari F430 Spider, or its friend the white Lamborghini Gallardo, both of which reappeared transiently at the construction waste transfer dump a little ways away from here (I still suspect mob activity: expensive Italian sportscars and the construction and "disposal" industries... hmm. Maybe The Sopranos has been colouring my thinking. On second thought, I think I'd better not ask to borrow either one.)

Anyway, it should be clear by now that this new-found age of mine has done absolutely nothing to give me wisdom, clarity of thought, or new levels of eloquence, and as a result you end up with the same old bumf in this post. I'll just leave you with the following photo of a happy-go-lucky, 30-year-old Ricardipus surveying the wilds of North Wales, not considering for a single moment that his hopelessly muddied-up, colour-tweaked, posterized and otherwise violated countenance would end up posted on the internet as the coda to what has, by any method of measuring, turned out to be a really, really lame post-birthday post.