40... it feels a lot like 39

I turned 40 on Tuesday. Yep, the big 4-0. Middle aged. And, really, it doesn't make me feel any different. On the other hand, it means I got a kick-ass party the Sunday before (Tuesday's a crummy day to have a decent party)!

Rather than do any food ourselves, we mostly got a selection of really nice meat/cheese/veggie/sushi platters from the grocery store. It greatly simplified things. Of course, plenty of food was brought by guests. And there was a cake (courtesy of my mother-in-law Helen). There was a selection of ice cream to have with the cake. There were also Shirley Temples.

I also did all I could to get as many guests as possible to play SingStar. It's always fun to stick a mike in someone's hand and make them sing along to "We Built This City" and "The Final Countdown" (which actually has the lyrics, and I quote, "Ba ba ba baaa! Ba ba ba ba baaa!"). Everyone was impressed by Nathan, my supervisor from work and as white as any of us at the party, kicking butt on Run-DMC's "Tricky". I'm not sure if he was singing the Run part or the DMC part, but he rocked.

And gifts. Wow. Much more than expected. A couple of weeks before all this, I got myself a PS3 (woo!), so it was great when I got Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction from my mom; it was the game I most wanted for the new console (although I gather she didn't know exactly what she was after and asked for Pools of Destruction at the store). I also got a couple of gift cards for EB Games, so I now also have Lego Indiana Jones. Other gift highlights had to include:

• a plush of the killer bunny from Monty Python and the Holy Grail
• an extremely silly Marvel comic called Wha-- Huh?!
• my very own Doctor Who sonic screwdriver, along with a wallet with psychic paper (now I can make anybody's cell phone work across any distance through time and space and I can easily get into any party or crime scene of my choice)

And best of all, everyone honoured my request; there were no dancing girls (or girls jumping out of cakes), no firework, and no one tried to get me to drink alcohol. There was the mandatory singing of "Happy Birthday" as the cake came out, though, which was a bit embarrassing.

Most of all, the day was just... fun. I've got great family, great friends, great co-workers and a great wife in Lynn (who really held things together and made sure I had a steady supply of Shirley Temples).