My own birthday was Friday. I'm 62 now. There are a lot fewer of the family with birthdays in April than there used to be.
As you can see by Itzl's concerned look, this group is for us to check in at to let people know we are alive, doing OK, and not affected by such things as heat, blizzards, floods, wild fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, power outages, or other such things that could keep us off DKos. It's also so we can find other Kossacks nearby for in-person checks when other methods of communication fail - a buddy system. Members come here to check in. If you're not here, or anywhere else on DKos, and there are adverse conditions in your area (floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, etc.), we and your buddy are going to check up on you. If you are going to be away from your computer for a day or a week, let us know here. We care!
IAN is a great group to join, and a good place to learn to write diaries. Drop one of us a PM to be added to the Itzl Alert Network anytime! We all share the publishing duties, and we welcome everyone who reads IAN to write diaries for the group! Every member is an editor, so anyone can take a turn when they have something to say, photos and music to share, a cause to promote or news!
Plans did get changed, though.
I took my birthday off (I always do when it falls on a weekday). I took myself out to breakfast at Sanborn's, of which I have already had much to say here. The coin flip went for savory rather than tart, so I didn't have the rhubarb German pancake, which is my favorite - but then I had one on the 12th, when I took the offspring down to breakfast for my firstborn's 37th.
Then I went back home for a while. My mother called, and we got caught up on family news (it's been almost a week since we talked). And then I was very surprised to have my daughter let herself in to raid my laundry money. She handed over $6 in bills for the same in quarters. My laundry change pot is no longer full to overflowing - but not far below the rim, either. I have plans to do my own laundry today.
It appears her ex had to rush his girlfriend to the hospital that morning, and she had to wait for him to arrive (which he eventually did, apparently at around 1:00 PM). I was not going to disrupt my plans, and she didn't expect me to.
The remainder of my day was running a few errands and meeting juliandomain (aka Horace Boothroyd III) at the library and going to lunch with him. There's a very nice Japanese restaurant a few blocks from the library, and that's where we went - the menu for lunch isn't particularly extensive, but the food is good.
I came home from that and goofed off the rest of the day. One of my brothers called me in the early evening - he and his wife had arrived at Mom's not long before.
Saturday was supposed to be a few hours of babysitting so my daughter could put in some time learning a new system at her job, a soccer game involving the granddaughter, and a late lunch at the Kennedy School. It ended up being 7 hours of babysitting, since my granddaughter has caught a cold, and my daughter and I are going out Monday evening, since the ex doesn't work Mondays and can stay late.
There was another coin flip happened earlier in the week. On Thursday, we had all we needed to turn in our preferences for one of the high school summer research programs my boss mentors for. One of the five kids interviewed was a definite YES YES YES; two were they'd do well, but they'd be better suited somewhere else. Of the remaining two, they were both smart and sweet tempered and interested and the only thing to choose between them was one had braces and one didn't. So we flipped a coin. We'd take both if we could, and I did make that clear when I called in with the choices.