Today Is Your Birthday: It’s My Birthday Too

T.S. Eliot:
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.

Today’s dawn: do you see the heart? (photographed by my husband).

Today’s sunset:

This birthday didn’t go as planned. First, I broke my wrist at Mammoth over Thanksgiving which meant I couldn’t ski for my birthday so we cancelled that trip. Then my husband got sick so we couldn’t go to Sycamore Hot Springs for the weekend.

The year was a bit mixed up as well: I tripped over sand bags just before last year’s birthday which made skiing last year challenging but it made my PCT hiking goals impossible.  I had some other upsets as well– and other pleasures including going to Burning Man for the sixteenth time.

And I did have a good day today: the winter clouds offered a dramatic sunrise and sunset. I went to yoga with Tal Messica (check out this restorative pose he put me in back when I had on my cast! I did something similar today too.)

followed by chai and fresh banana bread from The Farmer and the Cook. I worked on the spring semester’s syllabus, and then enjoyed oysters from Jolly Oyster paired with an intense 2011 Puerta del Mar chardonnay from Ojai Vineyard.

We went to dinner at Cafe Zack where owner Hector Gomez suggested a really fabulous 2010 pinot noir from Thorne Wine to pair with my duck breast. Lovely floral and red fruit harmonized gently in the nose and on the palate offered a nice medium body wine that offered rich character and a plush substance. It retails for $36 and at the restaurant it had a very reasonable markup to $48.

Yvon and Malinda Chouinard of Patagonia were also at Cafe Zack but I’m not sure if they sang happy birthday to me or not. The evening ended with a massage from Cheryl Golden Bear.

Because of my broken arm, I didn’t get as much blogging done as I might have in 2015, and I didn’t complete my 53 interesting facts yet, but over all, I’m pleased.

According to WordPress:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 40,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 15 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

There were 508 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 241 MB. That’s about a picture per day.

The busiest day of the year was August 24th with 1,063 views. The most popular post that day was #CRUDEAWAKENING.

In 2015, there were 152 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 1,711 posts.

Here’s two more interesting birthday facts:

I share my birthday with Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress. Here’s his birthday blog post, Thirty-Two.

Today is also Larry Harvey’s birthday — he founded Burning Man.

1/11. An auspicious day!