“I Love Don Week” and “Stuff I Want” Update

My oh my, where does the time go!?!?! My birthday was 47 days ago and I haven’t thanked the many contributors and participants, nor have I updated my Stuff I Want Page.

Here’s my Blog entry fixing that.

First, the Stuff I Want Page has been updated. So you don’t have to worry about wondering what I got, what I have, and what I still need.

Second, wow …what a great I Love Don Week it was, and what an amazing 50th birthday, and what amazing friends and family I have. Thank you co-workers for the Mizzen + Main floral summer shirt! Thank you co-workers for the high powered flashlight …truly, it’s freakishly bright. So bright, in fact, it gets hot to the touch. Thank you co-worker B.F. for the long sleeve Spartan shirt. Thanks for the Angel’s Envy Rye Whisky, thanks K.M. for the Basil Hayden bourbon, and thanks to my wife, again for playing along with my birthday-week nonsense and for always being creative and thinking way outside the box. I got the splitting axe, which I’ve used already to fill half my wood pile, for the Vintage 1973 t-shirt, and the 1973 rocks glass. Oh, and a Stanley Classic Trigger-Action Travel Mug in hammertone green …big surprise but so cool. Love that this old brand made a comeback and it’s so well built and looks so cool and vintage. Like I am.

I made it to 50!!! Feels pretty great. Some might see it as getting old, but I’m not feeling old …not at all. I now have 2 kids at college and I have a high-school junior and if I think about the past 20 years of my life, where, let’s face it, most of life with 3 kids involves everything about those kids …sports, clubs, school, holidays, trips, and more. I’m sure I had selfish moments within 20 years, but mostly I put a pin in a buncha things, rightly so, and now I’m unpinning those things and I’m about to get crackin’.

Is that what “put a pin in” means? Meaning I said something like, “I want to write a book,” and, “I want to write articles for trade publications in my industry,” and, “I want to travel with my wife,” and instead of doing those things, I imagine that I write the ideas on a scrap of paper and “pin it” to an imaginary bulletin board.

Go to Napa and visit my cousin and his wife. Well, there’s private school tuition and if I’m going to spend money on a vacation, I’ll take my kids on a cruise. Put a pin in that Napa trip.

Go to Vegas for a long weekend with my wife. Write that on a piece of paper and put a pin in it.

Write a book. Get serious about my salsa side-hustle. Perform more at The Moth or even with a local theater group. Learn to play piano. Seek a promotion even if it means moving. Go to Europe for 10 days. Pin. Pin. Pin. Pin. Pin.

Back in the 70s and 80s, maybe 50 was considered “old” or that, by 50, you had better be doing what you oughta, and dreams are for young people, and what can you really do after 50?

I hope to prove that a helluva lot can be done. I feel like I have at least a decade before anyone thinks of me as “old” and, even then, I know some “old people” who, if I didn’t know any better, act younger than I do.

Oh, and I have lots of gifts still to get.