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Sarah turned 29 yesterday. To begin the celebration we stayed in bed for most of the morning. I then worked with her to make a superb pair of breakfast bagels including bacon, eggs overeasy, and extra-sharp cheddar cheese. We eventually managed to get ourselves into the swing of the day so we went together to the gym to work-out. My stomach has been feeling lots of pain from going to the gym lately. I think it has something to do with my plan to do sit-ups on an incline. I did about twenty of them on Wednesday and now I worry that I created a hernia. But if not I may end-up with a much more attractive stomach and continue my quest to become a Chippendales dancer.

I dragged Sarah to the FAT (Friday After Thanksgiving) chain reaction at MIT. It is hard to describe so I won't bother. Look at the MIT Museum site. The funny thing was that with thirty odd contraptions lined-up as soon as it was time to set them off the orchestrator asked each creator to describe what their link would do. The typical link description was delivered by an eight year old boy and sounded something like this. "My link is called escape from Martha's Vineyard because we are from Martha's Vineyard. Here a marble rolls down the run and hits a pulley that releases a train by hitting a magnet. Then this ball gets jerked off and that turns on the blower to blow-up the turkey balloon and makes the bell ring. The ringing bell makes the random generator push uh balls down the stairs through the uh, lego people, and then the bunny is free and walks to get the carrot to make the lever go down to make the next link go." Multiply that times 30. It was fun to watch the kids describe the creations.

We bolted early in order to make it out to the Carvey home for a dinner of leftover Thanksgiving foods. We had another serving of creamed onions. Sarah's sister Christina popped by. She had braved the mall crowds in order to purchase a J Jill gift certificate for Sarah. Her mother had purchased some useful gifts for her including a Burt's bees desitin based product that neither Sarah nor her mother could determine the purpose of. The general consensus was that it was for diaper rash. She also got Crest White Strips 7 Day. Those should be quite a bit of fun.

We drove to Chelmsford for the Bedford High School 10th reunion. It is interesting to be an outsider at someone else's tenth reunion. I have been to two of them now. It was interesting to watch Sarah tell her classmates about her current life. The major highlights are that we live together in Brookline, she is a child developmental therapy, her parents moved to Sweeney Ridge from their prior road, and her little brothers and sister all went to MIT. With that behind her she was able to drink heartily, celebrate her birthday, and dance to the music played by some twelve year olds who were trying to guess what ancient people who grew-up in the late eighties and early nineties listened to as music in highschool. I got one compliment from a woman named Cindy who has a child but no husband. She told Sarah when she saw me she was wondering who the cute guy was that she didn't recognize and whether she recalled if I had gone to high school with them. We all danced together on a tiny dance floor to end the evening. Many of the Bedfordians were going off to Lowell for the rest of the evening but Sarah and I elected to drive home and stop at Burger King for some chicken sandwiches, french fries, and onion rings.

One thing that did disconcert me was that the Bedford 20 year reunion was happening only about fifty feet from the 10th reunion. As I first passed through them I thought to myself that Sarah's class hadn't held-up very well with the times. Then I thought that I was in between the 10th and 20th reunion and I had a good three year head-start on the people at the 10th reunion but was rapidly running towards the 20th reunion. If that wasn't enough all the reunion talk had prompted Sarah's mother to talk about her 40th reunion and that 18 people from their class were already dead. Time is breathing down my neck some days especially when it appears through other people's lives unravelled in front of me.