September 20
First I should say I got a birthday card in the mail a few days ago, but I'm waiting to open it until my birthday, which is tomorrow. As for today, there was a small gathering of relatives to celebrate four birthdays this month, including mine. As you can probably imagine, there haven't been a lot of family gatherings this year, at least not as many as on normal, non-pandemicky years. Anyway, I got several birthday cards, most of them with money in them. Also Mom gave me some bags of coffee and a bag of pistachios. And Steve & Kathy gave me a set of three wooden puzzles. So far I've tried one of them, and can't even figure out how to put it together while looking at the instructions. Anyway... that's all I have to say for now.

September 21
Started my morning with some blueberry cobbler-flavored coffee, one of my birthday presents. That's nice. But I have some bad news I've been waiting months to share, which is that none of the carrots I planted in my garden this year grew, so I can't have my traditional birthday carrot. Also, for the first time, I planted parsnips, and none of them grew, either. I had hoped if the carrots failed to grow at least I could have a birthday parsnip. But no. In fact most of what I planted didn't grow. It was a bad year for gardens. (Thanks, 2020. It's been a bad year for pmuch everything.) However, I did get a couple of summer squash and a couple of zucchinis, which I picked a couple weeks ago on Mom's birthday. And today I picked the four butternut squash that grew. Hopefully I can do something with at least one of them today, so at least I can have some kind of garden vegetable birthday tradition.

Later... so, yeah, I did end up cooking one of the butternut squashes. It was good. What else can I say? I did some editing of one of the chapters of my long-neglected book, but didn't finish, because it's a long chapter. Still, I'm happy to have done something writing-ish today. And my dad gave me some money. And later, much later, I watched Happy Death Day. That was fun. I also drank some beers from a Sam Adams "sweater weather" mixpack, which includes (of course) Boston Lager, plus Sam '76, October Fest, and Jack-O pumpkin ale (delish). And now I have about one and three quarter hours left in my birthday. I could write a review of the movie, but I think I'll leave that for tomorrow. So I'll have to figure out what else to do....

September 22
Got another birthday card & check in the mail today.