All in all a good birthday was had by yours truly, thanks for all the birthday wishes from all of you.

One thing though.

Next time send nekkid pictures.

Seriously, isn't that the only way I can fully appreciate your birthday wishes?

---

I previously mentioned that I wanted to go skydiving in celebration, and punishment, of turning 30. I failed to mention that the Girl was ardently against this.

I've talked about doing it for every birthday since she and I have been together, but I just haven't gotten up the sack to do it yet. The day I wrote that entry, I interrupted the Girl while she was studying with my proclomation that, for my 30th, I was finally going to jump from a plane.

She reacted to my excitement the same way she would have if I had just told her that I was planning on pouring axle grease and gasoline onto the back patio, shaving my entire body, igniting the patio and turning our backyard into the "Super Slip 'n' Slide o' Flames!"

Which is to say, she gave me the look and banished me from the study room, post haste.

When I asked later why she was being so squirrelly about my urge to plummet to the Earth, she gave me the Bambi-eyes and launched into a spiel about how she doesn't want me to die and that she'd worry about me, and that I need to understand how much she doesn't want me to do this, and how much she doesn't want me to sneak off and do it anyway.

Cheezus, she was almost in tears.

I found this mildly strange as every other year I'd told her about my birthday wish, she'd just said that she didn't want to watch, or be near, or know about it at all. Now, she's worried about me? This kind of made sense, she's thinking about our future together and doesn't want me to end up embedded 12 feet into the Northern Colorado soil. Maybe she's thinking more about our mortality after that CPR/Emergency Responder class we took last week.

I wasn't sure, either way made me feel loved, I guess, but what kind of crushed me was when she told me not to sneak off and do it either.

I'm pretty sure there was no way she could know that me and CoWorkerBuddy were planning on doing exactly that. It's not like I normally sneak around and do shit without telling her. Maybe she's psychic, like her mother.

Tangent Time

The Girl's father, CaveMan, is fond of telling me that her mother has psychic powers.

"Psychic?" I'd say, asking the obvious, "how's she psychic? And why haven't you hit the PowerBall yet?"

"Well," Caveman would say solemnly, "she seems to always know what I'm going to do."

"What, like whether or not you were going to nip your thumb with the ChopSaw? She has premonitions and shit?"

"Well, no, not like that," he replied, leaning in close with all seriousness, "She knows stuff though, like whether or not I'm going to water her flower garden, do my chores, or go to the store with her. It's uncanny."

End Tangent

CoWorkerBuddy is roughly the same weight as me, so we were both planning a diet and workout regimen with the sole purpose of making the skydiving weight limitations. Not for our health, or looking better, or anything stupid like that. No, we both want to leap from an aircraft, screaming and pissing and flailing, in celebration of our PissShitHell milestone.

We had it all planned out, and now it seemed the Girl was dead-set on thwarting it.

This was fine, though, no problem. I'll find another way to freak my shit out, I'm creative like that.

I took a studied look at the trees in our backyard and figured I could rig up a bungee-system on the really tall one. I already almost fell out of that fucker once, I figure I should do it on purpose this time, sans neighbor's cats.

It was that, or see if I could hit the really spongy area of the lawn from the garage roof with a well-placed leap.

Neither sounded as appealing as a structured, sanctioned, professionally-controlled, fall to the ground.

The birthday rolled around and we went to the Mom's for a special dinner. That lady can not only golf like a champ, she can flat out cook. She even made me all my favorites because she's the coolest Mom ever.

Then came the part I had forgotten to be excited about, present time.

Or, as I like to call it, if you love me, give me cool shit.

The Mom busted out some cool golfin' shit, like head cleaner and some new balls, because my head is always getting dirty and my balls were getting old.

*giggling-like-twelve-year-old*

She got me a fly-ass shirt too, that is apparently the same one worn by that pimp-ass muthafucka, Tigger Woods. I can call him, "Tigger," because we're both pimps like that. We be all up in that golf n' shit, yo.

Then, the Girl came in with her present. She'd been excited like nobody's business for about a month and I had absolutely no idea what she had in store. I'd tried to wangle it out of her, but she held fast. I even threatened to tickle her, a trick I learned from CaveMan, but she wouldn't break. She told me that it was even better than the UtiliKilt, so that could only mean that it was going to be the bestest present ever. No pressure there.

She came in with a cardboard box, about 2 feet square, that was partially wrapped in that day's Comics section. I unwrapped the only part that was wrapped, thinking it peculiar that she hadn't wrapped the whole thing.

Then I saw what she'd used to seal the top of the box.

It was a bumper sticker that read: "Mile Hi Skydiving"

My first emotion was pure glee, but I quickly reverted to bitterness, as I figured that she was just fucking with me. Besides, then what would be in the box? A parachute? Jumpsuit? Diapers for when I jump out of the plane and shit myself?

Turns out there was nothing but big packing balloons and a 8" x 11" piece of paper.

A Gift Certificate, entitling one "JuddHole" to an instructional course on Advance Freefall and one death-tempting jump from an aircraft from Mile Hi Skydiving.

It was at this point that I probably could've used diapers, because I almost pissed all over myself.

It's hard to express how impressed I am with the Girl and her gift. Not only because she pulled a classic snow-job on me and had me totally believing that she "was scared of me skydiving, and just wanted me around to grow old with," but for actually going out and facilitating my dream of defying that old coot, Newton, and NOT dying after falling thousands of feet.

Then the Mom chimed in, reminding me that I'd invited her to go too. She won't even need the class or a diet, she can just sign a waiver, watch a video and join me on my adventure.

That's way cool. I can only imagine, me and my 60-year old Mom, screaming like retards at a Chuck E. Cheese, speeding towards the ground from a mile up, doing our best not to soil our rented equipment.

Awesome.

Then it hit me.

Crap, I've still gotta lose all that weight. Granted, I'm down to about 236, but I really, really, really, really, REALLY, miss beer.

"Thanks honey, but I'm still too fat. This thing won't expire before I get my fat ass slimmed down, will it?"

She explained that she got the Gift Certificate from a customer of hers that works there, a sweet hookup, that he promises her that they have one, just one, canopy that's rated for fatasses like me (up to 250 lbs.) and that I can go right frickin' now, if I wanted.

And I can go back to drinking beer.

*Sniff*

*Sniffle*

That may just be the greatest gift of all.