Another year, another birthday

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Yesterday was mine, and as always it was grand. Nice bike ride (well, going south anyway, the gusty north wind on the way back home was not so nice,) great to talk to all my loved ones, good dinner, the Super Bowl and some great presents. All of it adds up to ease the sting of notching another year.

Spent some more time today preparing for my trip. I'm having a real tough time understanding how I'm not going to lose my mind being locked up in that aluminum tube for 6 hours. I have the iPods loaded, I have a good book of travel stories, I have Solitaire on my Blackberry, now all I need is a drug to extend my attention span. My brilliant flash of last night was - crossword puzzles! Since I'm still 8 months behind in my Sunday Times puzzles, I copied a dozen of them along with the answers and stuck them in a folder along with my handy Chinese phrases and my "take me to this location kind taxi driver" printouts.

At this rate, I'm going to need a suitcase just for entertainment.

中国上海延安西路2099号 is where I'll be on Monday night in case you're wondering.

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