I've received what must be some of the best gifts for which a person can ask for my birthday this year, including a unicycle and a church pew. Hard to beat that!

I don't know if unicycling looks difficult to you but it never really did to me. Suffice it to say, it's much harder than it looks. I've been trying for about 3 days now for one hour each day and thus far I'm sore, bruised, and not much closer to being able to ride the thing. It's been great fun, though. Oh how you would laugh if you saw me.

My mother asked everyone she knew what they wish they'd known before they were thirty and compiled the results. I'll try and post them here for posterity. Some are quite good.

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I'm only going to say one thing about New Orleans. I've had the strangest reaction to the whole situation. It's almost like my brain couldn't and can't cope with the people tragedy so I've found myself worrying about the pets that were left behind.

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Thanks to jaeger and karatop I'm totally hooked on Alias. It's weird for me to be hooked on a television show.