Once again, it's time to wish happy birthday to another member of my family. Today, my niece, Alyson Marie Stahl, turns ten years old. Like her younger brother, she was also born in Fallbrook Hospital in Fallbrook, California. Honestly, that kind of freaks me out. She's ten years old. I was a senior in high school when she was born. I guess what will be even more freaky is when the new baby is ten and Alyson is twenty and I'm almost forty, and hopefully I will be married to some hot young bikini model.

I can accept that Sawyer is seven, no problem. But the fact that Alyson has now moved up into the double digits is freaky. Freaky, I tell you. In three years she'll be a teenager, and in two years she'll be in junior high school. I need to go lie down.

Speaking of getting old, my back kind of hurts at the moment. I do have a chronically bad back, but every once in a while I do something that makes it slightly worse. Last night, I tore my room apart searching for my worn out copy of "On the Road" because Shane Ross wants to borrow it. I knew it was in a box somewhere, but I had no idea which box. My life would be much easier if I had a bookshelf, but since there is really not enough space in my room for a bookshelf, most of my books are buried in boxes under my bed or in the back of my closet. Also under my bed, there's a disassembled coffee table and a microwave oven that's probably giving me prostate cancer. So, last night I dragged the heavy book-filled boxes from my closet to find it, and it was not in any of them, so I pulled boxes out from under my bed and, sure enough, it was in the first box I checked under my bed. I should have looked under my bed first before dragging the boxes out of my closet.

I had to do something to occupy my time, though...my roommate was out here in the living room watching TV with some girl who I think might be his girlfriend or something. I don't know. The last two Sundays I've come home to find them sitting awfully close to each other on the couch so, perhaps he's got something blossoming, and I didn't want to get in the way. I think she's younger than him, though...by like eight years or something.

So, my dad called last night after I finished writing that post and said he was almost in my area. Since I had that meeting to go to, I made arrangements to meet him in the church parking lot. While I was helping to set some stuff up, Travis Long told me that my dad was out in the parking lot, which I thought was strange because he had never met my dad, but then he said that my dad had introduced himself and asked if he knew me. So, Travis has met my dad. Yay for Travis.

Anyway, I left the church and my dad and I went to have dinner at Kabuki in Pasadena. I love that place, and it's even better when somebody else picks up the bill. After that, we went to a nearby Starbucks and had coffee. All in all, I spent a total of three hours with him. That's kind of weird, when you think about it. That most likely means that, in the entire year of 2002, I'll have spent a total of three hours with my dad. Strange.

That's honestly about all I can think of at the moment. I still have that splinter in my toe and I'm not quite sure what to do about it, because it really hurts but, at the same time, it refuses to come out. I think I'll just cut my toe off and be done with it.