First off, let me begin with thanking everyone who has emailed, messaged, called, or in other ways communicated a Happy Birthday to me. It really was great to hear from all of you, and I’m going to try to respond to everyone individually, but in case I don’t, please know that it was well appreciated.
To those of you who’ve been following, you might know that I’ve been going through a lot of changes as of recent, and I thought today would be a great time to jot down a whole lot of things that I’ve done for the first time, while giving some background to make it interesting.
I started my second decade in service to the Israeli Air Force, and have ended it living in Manhattan. Big jump, and wildly exciting.
These past few months of living in the USA have opened first-times for me all over again, and I thought that some of them might be of interest, or maybe even inspire you.
First time living completely on my own – no roommates. Not that there’s anything wrong with roommates (wink at YAP), but it’s something I’ve never done. Now I live on my own.
First gym sign-up and actual attendance. It’s going well, my trainer likes me to push myself harder than I would on my own. Isn’t that the point? Bah humbug.
First time visiting places like Boston, MA, Stanford, CT and Long Island. What can I say? Never been there. Now I have friends and family there. First time eating Hibachi-style!
First time skydiving. And sledding. First time to walk around in public without a shirt on in a place that’s not the beach.
First time watching Broadway – and then off-Broadway, and going back again and again. Needs major update.
First Mac. Ugh. Call me crazy, but I’m not liking it.
First large history post. I thought a lot about that one, and it’s good to re-read it. I never continued on my personal history, maybe another time.
So that’s a lot of the past year – not everything by a far stretch, but a lot of great and goodness.
Today marks another first for me – turning 30 (yes, I know the cat’s out of the bag now. I don’t care). On December 25, or the Fifteenth of Tevet, depending on which calendar you follow, I turned thirty years old. So to mark this occasion, I did another first – snowboarding. Yes, yours truly went out with some friends and headed up a mountain, to hurt himself in ways that have gone previously undiscovered by himself.
It’s not as easy as it looks, but I was in full cold weather gear, and needed it. My butt slammed into the snow so many times today that I think I might need a new pelvis. Same with my knees (and I don’t mean that I need a new pelvis for my knees…), and curiously enough – my big right toe.
Turns out that if you have feet larger than the board, you should try not to slam them into hard packed snow when trying to get up. So I slammed my big toe (while in a two-ton snow boot attached to a snowboard) int the ice, and now it’s scary black-and-blue. Ouch.
So I got to celebrate my birthday, for the first time in a long time, and to end it off, when I got home tonight, and got some dinner ready, I sat down to watch one of my favorite films – The Neverending Story. Don’t laugh at me – I love that movie. I get all teary-eyed and shivers run down my back and all. I guess I’m a big sap, but I love a story that meant a lot to me – the power of books, a good story, adventures and such. It’s probably really cheesy to today’s world and standards, but it’s awesome.
So there. Now I’m going to kick back and relax, and fall asleep to another of my favorite movies – Labyrinth – and wake up all sore in the morning.
If you celebrated the Channukah thing or the Xmas thing, hope you had a good one. Watch The Hebrew Hammer and rejoice!