Senior benefits here I come!

It starts around 7:20am. My niece is the first, waking me up to wish me happy birthday. I can hear excitement in her voice so I mask my grogginess and annoyance and try to sound as pleasant as possible when I thank her. 10 minutes later my cell rings with the first text message of the day, but I ignore it try to go back to sleep. 3 more texts and a voicemail message follow; I put my phone on silence.

This is just the beginning, you know. Today is the sixth of March. I’ve been through this enough times now to know there’s no escaping it. I won’t bother attempting to avoid people. Besides, my sleepiness and a sore throat notwithstanding I could even risk saying I’m in a good mood this morning. I haven’t made any plans, though, and out of habit I’ll pretend today isn’t important. I guess it’s a holdover from being raised a Jehovah’s Witness, ya know?

Back in the early days the other kids always looked so bewildered when they found out I didn’t observe my birthday. They’d toss me a curious look here and maybe a snicker there; I always put on my best apathetic face and shrugged at them. “It’s any other day for me,” I’d always go. That was the line. Act like you don’t care, Aaron, act like you don’t care. Don’t let them know you secretly envy them or give them a reason to feel sorry for you.

I think I was convincing. I must have been because somewhere along the way I bought into my own story and went from secretly wishing my birthdays could be special to earnestly not giving a damn that they weren’t. I got use to the 6th being as boring and uneventful as any other day of any other week of the year. Like Christmas, you know, but without the snow and the added joy of not having to endure watching other people receive gifts while I didn’t.

I am only a little bitter. No point fretting over it, right? To my credit I’ve started to remove the stains from the silliness of my religious upbringing. Two years ago I bought my little brother from a different mother a gift for his 17th and it probably meant more to me than him thanks to it being the first time I’d ever done anything of the sort. Hey, one of these days I might even get around to singing someone a happy birthday song or go wild and buy a Christmas tree!

It’s 7:56 now. The house is silent and empty. My pillow is over my face, my cover over my pillow. I just want to go back to sleep but already the 5th text message is chiming in. This one from… my cousin. “Happy birthday, slut!” I laugh at our in-joke and saunter out of bed over to my pc. No sleep for me, I guess.

In #moap Gary and PA are talking, Eric is saying something about unemployment rates, Caleb has just left for work, and Victor is… spamming. I grin and minimize mIRC. On to my email. And look, happybirthdays from all over the inter-oceans. Happy birthday from Pizza Hut! Happy birthday from Webshots! Happy birthday from the Art and Drawing Forums, Shoryuken.com, iCoke.com! Happy birthday from Stormfront.org! I get a chuckle out of the last bit; even the white nationalists are wishing me happy birthday.

Today might not be so bad after all.

On the eve of a new number.

Just some random thoughts. Finished the archives and contact pages and I decided to get rid of “About” too. I just can’t be bothered writing enough about myself to fill it up. Lame, I know.

It just occurred to me that this is my very last day as a 22 year old. Not going to waste time reflecting on what has been a generally uneventful and slightly disappointing year.

My Sennheiser headphones finally crapped out. Given the abuse I made them endure I can’t say I’m surprised. This comes at a bad time, though. It’ll be awhile before I can replace them even considering how drastically they’ve dropped in price; next time I’m going wireless.

On the music side of things, I picked up Lounge Anthology: Cool Session yesterday. I haven’t gotten through half of it and I’m already amazed by how awesome the tracklisting is so far. I’ve fiddled with uAudio a bit. It’s a wordpress music player plugin and it seems fairly nifty. I think I’ve gotten it working, too, so let’s give it a whirl!

5 tracks from the album (click to plaaaaay):

One Self – Bluebird

Dajla – Routine

Alif Tree – Forgotten Places

Shazz – Sit Down

Diplo -Into The Sun

Shazz is a name I’d hitherto never heard of, in particular. I listened to “Sit Down” and was immediately reminded of Moby due to their similar sampling style. Cool, yah?

It’s not yet noon. I think some breakfast is in order, and maybe afterwards I’ll stop procrastinating and do my homework.

March to March.

Time flies, and such. Come the 11th, Aaronology.net will be a year old. If I let my mind linger on how little I’ve done with the site I’ll probably get frustrated and a bit down. But it’s really not all that bad. What’s a year, and what’s 60 bucks, anyway?

Jazz is playing on the last.fm radio, Nina Simone. It’s a nice change from everything I’ve been listening to recently. I’ve been gorging myself on post-rock for the last few months, particularly the band Mono and just recently Mogwai, God Is An Astronaut, Red Sparowes, and others. I listened to them while dozing off to sleep, while gaming, in the shower, doing homework, and any other time I could get close to my music. I guess I overdid it somewhere along the way. Something snapped, ha, and yesterday morning I found myself unable to bear any more post rock.

Weird, yeah? The point is I needed a change and jazz called out to me. And what music, too. I’ve adored everything I’ve heard so far, loving tracks left and right. Lee Morgan, Miles Davis, Stanly Jordan, Dinah Washington… names I’ve either never heard of or never cared for until now. But I’m quickly discovering that Jazz fits me like a well tailored suit. That shouldn’t be a surprise, I guess. I take after my dad in nearly everything else and this is his favorite music; heck, the only thing I think he’ll acknowledge as music.

Austin is curled up on my pillow behind me. My shades are drawn. The house is quiet. It feels like an easygoing day.