Happy Birthday Presents to Me!

I'm going to be 31 next week. I'm really not looking forward to being 31, in pretty much exactly the same way that I wasn't looking forward to being 30 last year. Truth to tell, I'm not all that thrilled about any of the numbers from here on out. Still, as they say, getting older definitely does beat the alternative...

Fortunately, the mildly depressing thought that yet another birthday means yet another step towards middle age (horrors!) has been very nicely offset by the fact that I've already gotten a couple of really great birthday presents.

The first one takes a little bit of explaining[*]. The backstory is this: Last year, after I'd moved into my new place, my mother took me out shopping for curtains. Now, you have to understand, I am not the domestic, interior-decorative, curtain-buying type. Put Martha Stewart and me together in a room, and we're likely to mututally annihilate each other in a massive shower of gamma particles.[**] But I wanted curtains to put over the blinds because, being a shift worker, I like to block out as much light as possible, and also because I'll admit to being just a tiny bit paranoid about my privacy. But I found buying curtains for the bedroom to be an absolute ordeal. Everything I found was either too frilly and flowery (ick!), or didn't fit my window, or required a fancy-schmancy curtain rod that'd be way too much trouble to install, or was some godawful color, or something. Finally, Mom (who by this point had probably gotten tired of listening to me bitching and moaning) suggested that I should just pick out some fabric, and she'd make me some curtains. Well, I chose some with a lovely starscape pattern -- very nifty-looking, very not-at-all-girly, very me -- and she did, indeed, whip me up a pair of curtains for the bedroom. Which, by itself, would be more than enough to put her several points up in the Who's Got the Coolest Mom Competition.

Not content to rest on her laurels, however, Mom followed this up with a truly inspired brainstorm which she took to my grandmother, the quilting maniac, with the end result that last week, to my complete and utter surprise, I opened up a package containing a beautiful, home made-by-Grandmom bedspread in the same ineffably cool star-speckled pattern as my curtains. I actually feel a little silly at how excited I got over this, more than a bit like a five-year old getting all worked up at being given a set of Star Wars sheets. But what the hell. I reserve the right to act like a five-year-old when it suits me, and not only does this thing look great in my bedroom, as well as giving new meaning to the phrase" sleeping under the stars," but it also comes from my grandmother, who is among the very coolest people I know, and everything she does is special.

(There, that's probably ruined any hope I may have had of not being thought of as soppy and sentimental, but oh, well...)

The other really great present wasn't actually a birthday present at all, since the person who sent it didn't even know I had a birthday coming, up, but that just made the surprise all the more pleasant. A fellow fannish type I've corresponded a bit with online happened to go to a science fiction convention in Blackpool, England a couple of weeks ago at which Paul Goddard, who plays Farscape's Stark, was one of the guests. Knowing what a huge Stark fan I am (well, hey, somebody's gotta be!), she sent me a fascinating, full-length report on everything he said in his talk, and then followed it up with a picture, autographed to me personally by the man himself! This was a total and wonderful surprise, as I didn't even know she was going to the con beforehand.

Interesting side note: The main reason she went to the convention in the first place was to see Andy Robinson, who played Garak[***] on Deep Space 9. Due to various scheduling problems, she ended up missing him completely, but mentioned that being able to at least get the autographed photo of Paul Goddard for me went some way towards making up for the disappointment. In a truly amazing coincidence, which it'd be hard not to attribute to positive karma if I believed in karma, the same day[****] that I got my surprise photo from her, she got a surprise personally-autographed photo of Andy Robinson sent to her by a couple of other fans who'd gotten to see him elsewhere. There are times when you really do gotta love the fannish community...


[*] Actually, I think that most really cool presents do take a bit of explaining to people other than the giver and the givee. Ask me about the giant wrench some time...

[**] It's a physics joke. Laugh.

[***] Who is also way, way up there on the All-Time Greatest SF TV Characters List in my estimation.

[****] Actually, it was this morning.