This is from midnight, July 14, 2008--the day I turned 30. It's one of my favorite memories so far because that whole week and all of the other days when there were parties for my 30th birthday (I had 5!! Lucky lady!!) were just plain old fun. One could have been pouty and crappy about becoming "old". However, I'd had an epiphany a few days before this birthday. I was thinking about people who had died while fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan that were born in 1978 and how they would have given anything in the world to be alive, and here I was was getting pissy about being older? "Baloney," I finally realized, "I made it this far and things are pretty great, so I'm just going to be happy for everything I have." That's why this is one of my faovrite memories. It was really joyous.