something I am grateful for today

birthdays [and no, today is not mine] -- when you think about it, it's a really swell concept, for everyone else to decide that the event of you arriving into their world is a special one, and one worth commemorating and celebrating... I mean there's a lot of good esteem goin' down there

As it happens, birthdays are an important and recurrent theme in my NaNo novel, so apparently, on some fundamental level, I believe in their power.