Odometer Still Rolling

I SURVIVED TURNING THIRTY-SEVEN yesterday, on the fourth day of a four-day weekend. With a disappointing raise in a performance review the previous Thursday, and an approaching birthday, as I reached Friday it seemed like the wisest decision I had made in some weeks to take this chunk of time off.

The actual birthday I spent with my parents, and at home, doing precisely nothing constructive. Thirty-seven's not much of a milestone year, though making it through another year, and maybe learning one or two things in the course of it, is surely reason enough to be happy. I probably won't know if I really learned anything until 5 or 10 years down the line, when I call upon some obscure fact or skill, and realize I picked it up sometime between 36 and 37.

As to the performance review, that's a topic to address when I am more awake. I did adjust my 401(k) contribution to a larger percentage, so if my current line of thinking leads where it might, I can reach the maximum amount of retirement cash I can stash earlier in the year.

As for the rest, I intend to live this next year as closely as I can to the philosophy embraced in my post entitled "I'm Not in the Happiness Business." I've had LL Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out" running through my head all weekend, probably from it being part of an iPod workout mix, and among the many armor-piercing rhymes in that song, the following couplet sums it up for me:

I'm gonna take this itty-bitty world by storm,
And I'm just gettin' warm!