Some birthday thoughts...

As you may have guessed today is my birthday. My 47th to be exact. I used to wonder when my parents and grandparents would say 'I don't feel any older than I did at 20'. Now I understand what they meant as apart from some aches and pains that seem to take forever to heal I don't feel that different from when I was 20 either. Ah when I was 20! I'm not even sure where I was at the time. It would have been 1985 so I was probably still at St. Mary's University in Halifax. My second year attending there and the first one where I passed more than I failed, lol! The following year I had transferred to the University of Guelph where I ultimately graduated with a degree in English and history. My first of 3 degrees! Hard to imagine but I still don't feel like much of a scholar. In honor of my birthday I am going to put in some highlights here. I hope you ca. Relate and maybe even enjoy. :) Stupidest thing I ever did and lived through: in my later 20s I worked for a development consulting company setting up offices in several African countries. I was in Uganda and went out to dinner where I met 2 Russians, an American and a Ugandan. We decided to have a drinking contest having shots and each time we finished a round the 'host' would change to the next guy in the group. We were drinking shots from the 'host's' country. So for the Russians we had vodka, for me Rye whiskey, for the American Bourbon and for the Ugandan we had Waragi. Waragi is Ugandan moonshine and it is lethal! In fact I blanked out after my first shot of it. But that isn't the stupid part. The stupid part was when I staggered back to my hotel through the middle of a Ugandan ghetto while wearing a Rolex watch! To this day I have no idea how I lived through that night! Most famous person I have ever met: when I was still in University my Dad and I went to a fly fishing school on the Deleware river in Pennsylvania. There were about 20 of us there as students and we sat and introduced ourselves. It went something like this: 'hi! I'm Peter. I'm a student.' (next guy) 'hi I'm Dan an accountant' (next guy) 'Hi I'm Bill. I'm an actor between jobs' (everybody laughed). It turned out that Bill the actor was William Hurt and that he had just won an Oscar for his role in Kiss of the Spiderwoman. Of course we didn't find that out until after he had left, lol. So no pictures! Biggest win: When Julie and I were in University together we were REALLY poor. One Christmas someone gave us a scratch and win lottery ticket and we won $4. We used that to buy 2 more tickets and both won $4. Letting it role we bought several more 'scratchers' and were having our usual fun playing 'what if'games while scratching. On the 3rd ticket we won $500! I almost died!! I was in total shock! I can honestly say based on that experience that if I were to ever win $1 million or more I would die of a heart attack. My second best win was a 5.5 foot Partridge fly rod when I was 13 that was a door prize. I am sure I made over 100,000 casts with that rod before it fell to pieces! My proudest moment: when he was 5 my son won the mini-king of the Lansdowne fair. He was so cute and confident dressed in his little suit. He won because of what he said during the 'question' session on stage which was part of the contest. When the person asking the questions asked him: "Where is your favorite place to go for vacation?" he got this great look of concentration on his face and then his face lit up. He grabbed the mic from the woman and said: "I like to go to my Gramma's because she makes the best cookies!!" every Gramma in the audience cheered and he won the contest. Me? I cried! ('cookie' or in his case 'gookie' was actually the first word my son learned. Most unique thing about me and mine?: my son and I saved a guy who had a heart attack at our karate club. I did the chest compressions and he helped set up the defibrillator. A couple of years later my daughter saved a mans life in a subway station when he had a heart attack. She gave CPR until the paramedics arrived with the defibrillator. I guess with a last name like Knight saving people comes naturally. Well I am almost at work so I have to go. You have a great day. I know I will! :)