random thoughts – Day 2,156 (Tuesday) – birthday chat

Pretty morning sky color.

It’s Dad’s birthday tomorrow. When I was a kid we talked about his age, and for years he would say he was 29.  When he was well past 29, he upped it to 39. I know how old he is, but I don't consciously think about it because then I have to accept the reality of my own age and I kind of like it in my little bubble of age denial.  

My sister had today off from work. She has a birthday tradition with Dad where she makes sausage gravy and biscuits for breakfast. Now that I’m local (and still unemployed) it’s a lot easier for me to be able to play, too. 

My butt was out of bed and mobile in time to see a pale schmear of color in the morning sky before I hit the shower. Before too long, I was caffeinated, dressed, and headed out to Fitchburg. I brought over the mini cupcakes with coffee frosting made on Monday night for the occasion.

Wee cupcakes with coffee frosting.

Dad, Sis, and I drank coffee, ate breakfast, and talked about a lot of random topics and it was nice. And instead of having conversational questions that linger unanswered in the air forevermore, I harnessed the power of the Internet and visited Google several times.

When the conversation was our mutual disdain for the highway robbery of cable providers and a digital antenna was mentioned, none of us knew quite what it was or how one worked. A quick Google query provided photos, places to buy such a thing, and advice on where to install one.  

Google search topics from our morning together included:

- kerosene near me (Dad has a lantern and said kerosene couldn’t be gotten anywhere – Google disagreed)

- how tall is Brendon Urie (niece has a cutout and I wanted to know if it is true to height)

- Tedy Bruschi Papa Gino’s cutout (Sis missed her chance and is still bummed Tedy landed in the Papa Gino’s dumpster before she could get it. I wanted to see if there are any kicking around somewhere)

- digital antenna (smaller than I expected in both size and cost)

- can crystal go in dishwasher (oops, I’ve been doing it wrong for decades)

- clay flower pot candle heater (allegedly, a room can be heated with one)

I love research. It’s probably not a shocker to anyone who knows me, but I was the nerd on the edge of my seat waiting to hear the details for final papers in school. I loved having to look stuff up and crank out 15 or so pages on it. Research was one of my favorite aspects of background prep for articles and interviews for the newspaper, for customer testimonials for bank ad campaigns, and for the learning center articles I wrote for the website. I don’t think a day goes by that I’m not tapping random questions into a search engine at least a couple times because it’s so easy.