It’s almost my birthday! Yeah, I know that when you reach my age birthdays aren't supposed to be a big deal, but I must admit that I really enjoy my birthday. I'm not sure why exactly, but I look forward to it. My philosophy when it comes to birthdays is to give myself as much freedom as possible on the actual day. No obligations, appointments or even parties for me on that day, thanks. I do enjoy a little bit of attention around my birthday though. My work buddies are taking me to lunch (thanks, girls!) and my folks and brothers will call me for sure to wish me a happy birthday (and sing Murtaugh family style) in addition to having a party for me the weekend before.

Of course, an early July birthday places me squarely in the sign of Cancer. And to some extent I am true to the sign’s characteristics. Yes, that means I can be a bit crabby at times (do I hear a chuckle at the “at times”?), but I’d like to think I'm similar to the happy crab above - just hoping for a nice day at the beach. In any case, I think astrology is interesting, and would like to know of any serious studies connecting birth dates to psychological traits. It seems possible to me that in those early formative months after birth the weather (if not the stars) could have some impact on a child’s development. My Chinese Astrology sign is the Rooster, but much like Chinese Checkers, the Chinese version doesn't make much sense to me.

I just love the water. It's one of the main reasons I enjoy the summer so much. Perhaps it's because I grew up around water - we had a pool at our house when I was a kid and took yearly vacations to my grandparents' house in Daytona Beach, Florida. The house was only a couple blocks from the ocean, and I remember walking to the beach with my brothers to bodysurf and enjoy the water. Back then I only spent enough time on the sand as I needed to warm up from my last trip into the water. Since then, I've come to appreciate the sun, sounds, scenery (no, not just the bikinis) and even the smell of the ocean. There's really nothing else like it - the power and rhythm of it is intoxicating to me. Apparently it has the same effect on Jazzy. Being mostly Lab, she's a natural swimmer and loves to play fetch in the water even more than she does on land (if that's possible).

Wouldn’t it be cool to be really small sometimes? Kind of like in those insipid Honey I Shrunk the Kids movies. Or maybe even smaller than Rick Moranis or those shrunken kids, perhaps even microscopic? My brother Steve and I used to play this computer game on my beloved Tandy Color Computer named Laser Surgeon: The Microscopic Mission. Such was the state of games in those days that we spent hours playing this game, and with absolutely no success. The idea was that you were controlling this miniature ship (I’m not sure if we were supposed to be inside it or not) that is shot into a patient with a particular problem that we were to then fix. The ship had a laser cannon on it to help it navigate through problems (and to make it more fun, I presume). In any event, the ship would travel through the bloodstream until it reached the heart. For some unknown reason, we couldn’t just go through the heart like the blood we were traveling in - we had to temporarily stop the heart in order to pass through (don’t ask me why we weren’t injected closer to the problem to avoid this step because I have no idea). The problem was, we could never revive the guy with our handy-dandy defibrillator. It was very frustrating to have the patient die over and over, so instead we decided to turn the tables on the game and make it a race against time to see how quickly we could put the poor bastard out of his misery. You’ll be happy to know that neither of us is now a doctor.