Kara Babcock

I read, write, code, and knit.

14 Articles Tagged with “birthdays”

  1. An embarrassment of love

    Today I am 31. I have been wished well and received gifts. I have also taken some moments to myself to meditate on the year behind me and the year ahead. Oh, and I cleaned my bathroom and did laundry, because Sunday chores don’t stop just because it’s your birthday.

    Last year I shared a “supercut” of my life in the form of photos I could find from my various eras. I talked a lot about friendship and about loving my friends:

    I'm 30 years old today, and I'm content. I'm not always happy, and I'm not always positive. But I will always, eventually, be okay, as long as I continue to have these people around me … who let me care for them joyfully and intensely…. Friendship as the patience that comes with knowing that “I love you” has as many manifestations as people have days in their lives, and if I love you, I will make sure you know.

    I have written about this idea before, that friendship is a verb, something you must consciously do. What I haven’t written much about, what I found myself reflecting on this weekend, is the reciprocal effect of accepting love…

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  2. Supercut

    "And in my head / The visions never stop / … There's just a supercut." (I know it's a song about love and loss, but I still love supercuts, mmkay?)

    A very young me and my brother, standing next to each other on the sidewalk, in windbreakers.

    I'm in Grade 4, and I'm holding a book from the school library all about idioms, which is entirely on brand. I already knew I wanted to be a teacher by that point, by the way. (The kid on the right is my younger brother, Brad.) And we're wearing fluorescent windbreakers, the height of ’90s fashion!

    Me standing next to my friend Lauren, who is much shorter than me.

    Although I'm sure I can find photos between 1999 and 2005 if I look somewhere, most of my extant digital collection dates back to 2005, when I got my first digital camera. Here I am in 2008, a year out of high school. I visited my friend Lauren, who lives in Ohio and whom I had only known online, for about 3 years. It was my first time travelling by myself, and back then going to meet someone you'd only ever known online (and stay at their house for two weeks) was still quite adventurous.

    This also begins my long history of awkwardly taking photos with people who are much shorter than me.

    Three women I worked with at the art gallery and me sitting in what I believe is Applebee's. From left to right: Dayna, Thea, Brittany, and me.

    You know what the secret is to avoiding awkward tall shots? Take the group shots sitting down! I believe this is in an Applebee's in 2010. At this point I had…

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  3. It was my birthday and I didn't blog even if I wanted to

    I’m 24 now.

    It’s not much different from being 23. I think I’ve changed a lot in a year. Last year I felt far too young to be a teacher. Now I’m jaded and cynical about the world of work!

    It’s weird to think I’m a quarter of the way through my likely life-span. I’ve still got so much left to learn.

    My birthday was actually on Friday. Another math teacher shares the same birthday with me (same year as well), so we were looking forward to celebrating our birthdays jointly. I arrived at school to find a present waiting for me outside my classroom. It was a brand new bow-tie, covered in pi symbols. Naturally, I put it on.

    Another math teacher had brought in some store-bought cake, so we had cake at lunchtime in classroom. Oh, the joys of working on one’s birthday.

    That evening I went to Norwich. I’m rather thankful that my birthday is near (but not at) the beginning of the school year: it’s a nice reminder to relax, unwind, and pick oneself up after the first few, heavy weeks of the new school year. This was the first time a number of we Canadian…

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  4. Belated birthday post

    This is a very belated birthday-related blog post. I started writing about my birthday the day after the fact, but I got sidetracked and never quite managed to finish the post. I need to start blogging again, because I have plenty to say. So we'll begin with my birthday.

    Some of my birthday presents, including manly panther tea.

    I don't celebrate my birthday with a lot of fanfare. However, I also don't sweep it under a rug like the curmudgeon in me is wont to do. I enjoy getting gifts, but that's true regardless of whether it's my birthday! Still, I got some pretty cool gifts from my family members. My dad got some books, as well as a whopping stack of Chapters gift cards, which are like candy you can use to buy books. My brother got me a mug with a stylized police badge that says "Spelling Police," as well as some tea. In particular, he got me a type of South American tea called Yerba Maté; I can't pronounce that name, so I just call it "panther tea," because the box has a panther on it. Incidentally, this is also why my brother selected that tea. In his own words: "Panthers are manly."

    I'm 21 now,…

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  5. 18

    Is there something special about turning 18?

    Heck yes.

    Normally I'm not one to get excited about birthdays. One year older ... but the 18th is special since it's the age of majority. Apparently on September 19, 11:59:59 PM, I am not mature enough, but one second later I have magically matured to just the right amount. I am now mature enough to participate in the democratic process by ticking boxes on a piece of paper. I am now mature enough to die for my country if the need should arise. I am now mature enough to make my own decisions, or so they say. But who are "they" anyway? And let's face it--any of "them" have probably not been 18 for a very long time.

    I don't really want to grow up. Growing up is scary. It means responsibility, leaving the safe world of adolescence behind. It means a different sort of arena for relationships, interaction, and criminal justice. Being an adult (that sounds very weird) is good in some ways though. Much less troublesome when it comes to doing the nitpicky stuff like conducting online transactions or signing legal forms that donate my soul to a needy demon.

    …

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  6. Celebrating birthdays in style

    Today I had a party today, with about eight friends over, where we just hung out and watched movies. First we watched A Night at the Roxbury, which I had never seen before, although I love "What is Love". Then we played two games of Scrabble; the first was a standard regulation game, and then we played one where "anything goes". And uh ... yeah. :ermm: We had some pretty interesting combinations of letters (I won't say words, because honestly, they weren't. :D). After that, we watched Love Actually (which neither Cortney nor Rhiannon had seen before!). Then we just talked until people went home.

    I had a blast, and the only reason I don't do this more often or be more "social" is that it tires me out, although I wouldn't mind having two or three friends over; I enjoy more quiet atmospheres where we can have enthusiastic conversations but we don't have to raise our voices or interrupt each other.

    I love my friends, and my parents are awesome. Honestly, I would go insane without my friends. I am not a social person by any definition of the word; I don't do much with friends. People don't…

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  7. Kubuntu, Birthdays, and Deaths

    The order is arbitrary, incidentally.

    I've been playing around with Kubuntu recently. My laptop used to overheat and shutdown in Kubuntu due to poor power management issues with the CPU. A few weeks ago, however, I took a shop-vac to the fans and sucked out the dust, and now it runs beautifully. I decided to try Kubuntu again, and although the fan is louder than in Windows, it doesn't get hot at all, which gives me the green light to start playing. ^_^

    Seth was a big help and was patient enough to answer my many questions as I poked Kubuntu and tweaked it to my satsifaction. If it weren't for him I would never have been able to get up and running so quickly. As it stands now, I feel comfortable enough to use it to do things like write this blog entry, chat, etc., after only three days!

    The best part about learning Kubuntu is that it's fun. Learning Windows is not fun; learning Windows is a chore. Although the terms "Linux" and "command-line" can seem scary, they aren't that scary as long as you go at your own pace. And the terminology is awesome. For…

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  8. Spatial sense (get some)

    I'm helping out with the backstage portion of my school's production of The Outsiders. Today after school, we needed to paint a set of stairs grey as a piece of the set. The tech department had graciously attached a railing to the stairs (which are just white pieces of wood), and then deposited them on the stage. We planned to carry it into the drama room, which is relatively adjacent to the stage (separated only by a hallway) and paint in there. Easy, right?

    Wrong. There's a ladder up to the lighting booth in between the stage proper and the door on stage right that leads to the hallway. As a result, the stairs were too wide to fit through either gap around the ladder, and we had to carry them down the steps at the front of the stage, across the entire length of the gym, into the main hallway, up another set of steps into the cafeteria, and then across the entire cafeteria to another set of doors.

    This is where we encountered our biggest problem--apparently the stairs wouldn't fit through those doors either. We even tried to jam it through using brute force, but no such…

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  9. Happy birthday, mom!

    Today my mom turns 49. Due to the fact that I have a website with a modest readership, I think it is cool that I can wish her a happy birthday and have many people who neither know me nor my mom know about it. It just goes to show how wonderfully disturbing this whole concept of blogging is.

    Oh, and yeah, happy birthday, mom! :hug:

    /me pokes loyal stalkers.

  10. Life's an adventure

    You think that driving near a bus is scary? Try being on a bus. :fear: I just noticed today that buses are big, heavy machines that are too large for most streets, and that you need to be insane to operate one. (Of course, this is true for any piece of modern equipment. I'm insane for even typing this under the delusion that someone will read it.)

    I thought of a cool new design for a T-shirt. :D (As I order my own from Rock-It Air Wear). An arror pointing up to me, and then the words "Proof of Intelligent Design". And the best part is that very few people would actually get it. ^_^ Next time I need a new T-shirt, I'll consider actually getting it made.

    Today's my dad's birthday. So to all those nonexistent people who are actually insane enough to read this delusional tripe, please give him some birthday wishes, as I know he's reading this . . . right now. Well, actually, now . . . yeah, hi Dad.

    I should go write my novel. I need to get to 50 000 words. But I also need to get my mom to finish her essay…

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  11. Talk Like a Pirate, eh--er, Arr

    Yes, I know I'm a day too late. I was just too lazy to blog yesterday. But yesterday was indeed Talk Like a Pirate Day, and if you weren't talking all piratical-like, you should have been!

    Not much else really to say . . . oh yeah, it's my birthday.

  12. Happy Pi Day

    Happy birthday, Tovan! Indeed, have a nice day.

    Also to all others: Happy Pi Day. Click the link over there to find out more. Have a nice day!

  13. Happy Birthday, Dad!

    It's my dad's birthday today . . . so happy birthday, Dad. If you're reading this, then it's time to close the browser and play some Freecell. . . .

    I've added a great new feature to the VSNS. With v2.3.3, you will be able to pin items at any time, or unpin a pinned item rather than deleting it. Version 2.3.3 will be released shortly.

  14. Another day, another year older

    Happy Birthday, eh . . .

    I'm 15 now. Nothing much is different, save that I'm 15. One year older. Hmm . . . one more year until I have to think of a new excuse not to drive. Up until now it's been "Oh, I'm too young" . . . in a year it will be something different altogether.