Another orbit complete

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It is my birthday today, marking the completion of another full orbit around the sun for me. Life moves at you pretty fast, to paraphrase Ferris Bueller, so it kind of snuck up on me this year; I wasn't on the ball enough to plan much of a celebration. Though I am heading out to have a meal with my co-birthday celebrant Mack and a couple of Spuds shortly.

Anyway, now that it's here I've been reflecting on some birthdays past and find four of them stand out for whatever reasons:

• I don't remember which year this was, but I was probably still in single digits. My dad had organized party activities for me and my friends that included a treasure hunt complete with clues and half-dollar coins(? I may be misremembering/conflating that part with a thing before a Triple-A game at Hi Corbett Field) that must have taken him forever to put together. It was a lot of fun.
• Number 11, 1980, when Dad took my friends and me to see Star Trek: The Motion Picture at the Oracle View theater. I'd seen the film probably twice already, but even then I was ensconced in my Trekdom. That said, before the movie one of my friends had brought over his new starship Enterprise toy and wanted me to help him correctly place all the stickers and decals on it and I felt really bad when, after the movie, I found that I'd fucked them up by placing the decals as they would have been on the TV version of the ship rather than the movie version.
• I want to say this was number 13, could have been 12 or 14, when I had planned a big party and invited a mess of friends over but only two showed up. I was initially super bummed out, but my mom took charge and declared a new party plan and took the three of us to mini golf and pizza instead and it turned out to be a really good time.
• And number 30, when my late friend Scott (and others) roasted me with the requisite Logan's Run "carrousel" and "runner!" jokes.

This one is destined to be obscure, but that's more than ok. In the grand scheme of things, it's a day like any other day.

Which in this era means a lot of anxiety and fretting about the world.

Meantime, building off of Erik's post on his recent birthday about people sharing the date, I will again note that I share my birthday not only with Mack (and Elliot Abbott, son of my friends Dawn and Derek), but with three Hall of Famers (Jackie Robinson, Nolan Ryan, Ernie Banks) and five rather forgettable former Seattle Mariners (Yuniesky Betancourt, Dave Cochrane, Tommy LaStella, Rob Whalen, Guillermo Heredia). Also Grant Morrison, Norman Mailer, and an number of actors including Suzanne Pleshette (The Bob Newhart Show remains one of my favorites); Kerry Washington; and, of course, Paul Carr, who's character Lee Kelso, helmsman of the Enterprise, was killed by a power-mad mutated Gary Mitchell in the second Star Trek pilot.

Speaking of Erik, he just returned from Minneapolis and has a nice post up today about his visit that y'all should read.

Tagged History, Personal, Seattle Mariners, Posted on January 31, 2026 at 6:21PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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