Not the best or worst birthday I've endured, but certainly stressful in its own peculiar way ... the absence of one digit from an address caused my workload to triple at the office, and a family member's illness across the country threw a pall over the day that never completely lifted, even as I forced myself through a pint of Jack Daniel's and stuffed myself with pie (that was one of Lori's gifts to me, a different pie every day for the entire week). We had a productive End Times practice, after which Abi and I ate crabmeat and lemon tarts (that sounds like a euphemism, but it isn't) and discussed the nature of reality, or something, I don't really remember. Lori bought me a USB turntable to convert vinyl LPs into MP3s, so if I can figure out which plug to stick it in I might be able to finally share with you some of my rarest records, such as Evangelist Bobby Stanley & Family, Hypnosis for Weight Control, Snake River's "Cat Trap" single and Dracula Presentation Record. Give me, what, like a month?

Noelle (pictured above) visited Lori and I last weekend, so that served as a pre-birthday party for me. We three enjoyed a relaxing few days, marred only by a hit-and-run accident that the girls were involved in near Ballard ... nothing to worry about, no injuries and merely minor damage to the car, but the fact that someone clipped Lori trying to pass her and never turned back sure blackened our outlook for a while. Luckily, by the next day the sun was back out and Noelle and I were drinking in the afternoon and talking about sex and cocaine like usual, so everything turned out fine.

NOTE: The illustration used for this blogpost does not represent the actual auto accident that Noelle and Lori lived through. The damage to our black Scion was minimal compared to the white whatever-it-is Noelle is posed beside -- this photo was stolen from her MySpace page for purely thematic reasons.