Thanks to all for the birthday shoutouts, including Esta, Craig, and Tony Pierce.

It’s going to be a pretty mellow birthday. I’m not the same guy I was ten years ago, when I was bemoaning the fact that a stomach ulcer was keeping me from going out for my first adult beverage in a bar upon my legal majority. It’ll be a nice quiet night at home with my wife.

Of course, I’ll be out Saturday at the company Christmas party, and plan to do some singing (as part of the entertainment, not spontaneously) and some dancing (spontaneously, not intentionally as part of the entertainment), but that’s a whole ’nother story...

Update: Thanks also to George and Becky for the CD and the kind thoughts.

I finally picked up Merrill Peterson’s biography of Jefferson again after putting it aside for almost a year. I’m glad I waited to start reading it again. The words Peterson wrote about Jefferson and his colleagues in the revolution are even more relevant today:

Jefferson’s progress from Virginia burgess to American revolutionist in seven years followed the main road of the patriot cause, beginning with the protective defense of traditional rights and liberties and ending with the radical ideology that became the birth-right and creed of a new nation. ... In the course of asserting their claims within the empire, the colonists became increasingly disenchanted with the home government, distrustful of its designs, and anxious for the security of their own polities. They began to think for themselves and to search out their own identity ...

If there are better words out there to describe what is happening in the blogosphere today, I don’t know them.

I'm using my long-neglected status as contributing editor at JHN to jump in and wish my brother an unmitigatedly happy birthday. All the best, Tim; you deserve it. In the words of Ogden Nash:

Year swallows year and licks its lips,
Then down the gullet of next year slips.