Friday was an especially happy day for Sticks. His 18th birthday, a near-perfect score on the driver’s test, and a special gift for graduation and his 18th birthday all wrapped into one.

Our birthday cake, with 18 candles. If I close my eyes and wish hard, I can pretend the other 31 don’t belong there. This is the best German Chocolate cake on the planet, bar none. My MIL makes it especially for our birthday.

It took less time to blow out the candles than to light them.

Sticks challenges me for the ownership of the cake. Whippersnapper.

Today his “fairy godmother”, aka his wonderful aunt, gave him the best gift of all.

I can’t think of a better transportation mode for drums than a box on wheels. A very, very, very nice box indeed.

Technorati Tags: Toyota, Scion xB, birthday, gift, 18

Today is Sticks’ 18th birthday. It is my 49th (GAWD).

Sticks is taking the drivers’ test today. He’s finished the first day of school, train commute and all. To him, it’s just a bigger version of high school. To BigDog, it’s a huge major milestone…proud dad and all that.

Sticks is celebrating after school and the DMV. I am working — big, huge gnarly project at work has me completely consumed until next week.

We’re going to the beach just as soon as Sticks plays his annual percussion concert on Saturday to celebrate birthdays and summer’s end and all of the other milestones that seem to have been ignored while we put our collective noses to the grindstone this summer. It will likely be the last time we go anywhere as a family of four for awhile, given that Sticks will have a whole new universe of independence.

I’ve read a zillion blog posts over the past week that have inspired me, but I’m too dang tired to write coherently, so I’ll save them and then they’ll be written about by everyone else, but I’ll probably still write about them.

Oh, and I did decide to stay with this new theme for now — it’s called Particles, by DevLounge. I like it because it’s different from the typical 2-3 column content/sidebar layout, it’s clean, and it has some nice features. I also decided to use the Lightbox plugin for the pictures, which is why the thumbnails in the RSS feed are smaller. To see the photos larger, just click on the post and then the photo — it’ll enlarge magically before your eyes.

I’m too young to be this old. 49 feels like one foot just fell into the grave.

My mom sent this to me — it’s one of the funniest pug videos I’ve seen, mostly because I can imagine The Pug behaving exactly this way.

Technorati Tags: peacock, pug, pets, animals, laughs

Disclosure: This post is NOT sponsored by anyone, not paid, not solicited in any way. I just really enjoyed the video and think you will, too.

The latest RockStartUp episode is great. It centers around the MESH conference in Toronto, beginning with the keynote session with Michael Arrington, Mathew Ingram, and Ted Murphy in the audience. As usual, Arrington spares no mercy toward Ted, but Ted has skin of steel. I’m starting to think they should rename the RockStartUp series to something more super-heroish. I especially enjoyed the horns you displayed for the audience’s entertainment and pleasure, Ted. Hmmmm, that gives me an idea.

The entire keynote can be viewed on Google Video here.

Here’s the RockStartUp episode (thanks, Loren!) Props to Travis, BTW, for the professional edits and camera work…much improved over the earlier episodes.

Technorati Tags: rockstartup, MESH, conference, Arrington, Ted Murphy, payperpost, rockstartup, goodcleanfun

Thanks to Vanessa at Vanessa Unplugged for including me on her list of 5 Rockin’ Girl Bloggers. I’m flattered to be included on the list, and the timing is perfect, since I’m not going to Blogher this year (sniffle!), but have blog friends I met there last year who are definitely rockin’ girl bloggers, too!

The Rockin’ Girl Blogger award is the brain child of Roberta Ferguson over at Blogging Made Devilishly Simple. The idea is to pass the award on to five deserving blogging sisters, building some community as we go.

Like Vanessa, choosing only five is difficult, but I’m going to try. I have a special blog category in my RSS reader for the blogs I always read first. Many of the folks I regularly refer to and link to here reside there — Liz, Kmilyun, Denise, Lee, etc. Here are five more in that special category that are truly rockin’.

• Kris is a Mom on a Mission. I love her Flickr photos and also her stories about raising boys in this crazy world. Watch that Flickr set, because she’s headed to Maui — one of the true wonders of the world.
• Katharine is EditorMom, who lives in the house of AD/HD raising two sons and occasionally sharing her adorable granddaughter with us. Katharine is a kindred spirit — she’s not afraid to write what she thinks with the strength of her beliefs behind it. And act on those beliefs, too.
• Donna at SoCal Mom is someone I’ve actually met, along with her Spouse Who Shall Not Be Named (but goes by Sir Baldilocks over on Flickr — ;-)). If you want travel info, her blog is a great resource. It’s also great for reading the behind-the-scenes stories from her time in the entertainment business, or just taking a minute to read about her awesome daughter’s accomplishments in gymnastics.
• Marie at Disarranging Mine has great photos of Springfield, Illinois in addition to some great del.icio.us links and blog posts. Now…Marie and I go waaaaaaaay back, but we’d lost touch. We were co-workers back in the CNN days, and then during the great Internet community diaspora of 2001, lost touch. She ran across me in a comment on Dave Winer’s blog and came on by. How wild is that?
• Mary Beth over at Supafine is another Blogher friend who just blogged her pregnancy with her second son more elegantly than you could possibly imagine. She sews, remodels, takes great photos and manages two little kids — one two; the other three months. She definitely rocks.

Finally, I’d like to give an honorary Rockin’ Blogger Girl award to Dancergirl, who has been sporadic about blogging lately, but has picked up the blogging gauntlet once again and recounted her experience in her own words (with her own special flavor of spelling and grammar, too) with AGT. She also takes terrific pictures and writes poetry that I really enjoy…So she gets my Up and Coming Rockin’ Girl Blogger award.

Technorati Tags: Rockin’ Girl Blogger, awesome blogging sisters, blogs, blogging, community, meme

The Pug is expecting the same consideration others have received. She wishes to have her sentence commuted so that she can be set free, retaining all of her Fifth Amendment rights, of course.

If you haven’t watched Lil Bush, do. It’s hysterical. You can watch the Lil Dems, Lil Cheney, Lil Bush, Lil Condi et al being Lil Cutups.

Technorati Tags: pug, dog, nikon d70, lil bush, comedy central

Thanks to Vicki Davis at the Cool Cat Teacher Blog for sharing this absolutely hysterical video by Alec Couros.

It makes ya think a bit — what would Robert Scoble do if the entire Internet crashed? Would he feel like “ctrl-alt-deleting” himself? LOL — watch it and laugh.

This is what you do with a photo that had all the elements of being great but one: focus. You make it arty and pretend like you meant for it to be this way.