When I went back to school, my grandma chided me, "By the time I was your age, I had graduated from college and was raising your mother and her older brother; pregnant with the third of what would be a family of 12 children."
"Well gramma, congratulations on your army of progeny. Me, I'm obviously a misanthrope and an egotist; so I must continue to somehow battle for supremacy over others. By continuously educating myself, I can maintain some degree of intellectual fascism, even thought it means on some level, I'm a poor self-hating son of a bitch."

Okay, so that's not verbatim; but dammit that's what I felt like saying.

I still do the "card shake" every time I get a card from anyone.

So, perhaps I missed it, but this means your birthday has either recently passed or is in the near future.

Well, knowing grandmas, it's probably in the near future, so I'll say "Happy birthday!" now so I don't get lost in the crowd.

Congratulations on surviving another trip around the sun, and I do mean that in a non-cynical way.

You should put up a link to your Amazon Wish List, by the way...
:-P

My birthday is Wednesday. And the Wish List is on the "About Me" page.

Your address there better bloody well be current!

And add some stuff to your list, girl...

My grandmother sends me cards with stamps. And in her elderly chicken scratch, writes the words "buy some gas". Maybe back in Italy, they used to exchange stapms for petrol.

Oooo...the Ramen book. Excellent! And I'm not adding more items until I get the Bon Jovi CD.