{"id":69,"date":"2010-10-27T01:21:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-27T01:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/salexander.com\/?p=69"},"modified":"2013-02-16T08:40:48","modified_gmt":"2013-02-16T13:40:48","slug":"a-great-birthday-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/?p=69","title":{"rendered":"A great birthday present"},"content":{"rendered":"

I turned 50 last week. That day was like almost any other. My wife was still in Canada for work, my youngest still needed to go to school, and I still needed to show up and work my 8 – 10 hours at my cubical before taking our daughter to her violin lesson at UConn. Not having my wife here pretty much stunk, but it would have still been work for her, school for our daughter, and work for me, then the drive to UConn for the hour lesson. I wouldn’t even get to talk to my wife until after 9 that night.<\/p>\n

When I first got home, I noticed that I had a box from Virginia friends on the counter. It was probably the highlight of my day, at least at that point. Seeing the return address from our friends Heather & Dave made me know that it was special. We’ve been friends with them for 11+ years now and Sue and Heather were pretty much joined at the hip for most of the last 8 years we were in Richmond. I have always thought of Heather as a little sister – sometimes a pain in the butt but most of the time just there to make me smile and laugh. After opening, I found out that this box was not just from Heather but from other friends as well. All the more to smile about.<\/p>\n

Contents (click here for pictures<\/a>):
\n50 Hershey Kisses
\n8 fancy blowers
\nA pack of birthday napkins and a pack of birthday cups
\nAn easy to identify birthday boy pin
\nAn office decoration party kit
\nA kiss and a promise package of candy (private story)
\n50 Hershey Hugs
\n50 life savers
\n50 pennies (for my thoughts?)
\na 50 Post It Note heart
\nOne Ode to Steve poem from Heather
\nand birthday cards from a few other great friends<\/p>\n

Thank you ladies. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the effort to help me celebrate my 50th birthday remotely!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I turned 50 last week. That day was like almost any other. My wife was still in Canada for work, my youngest still needed to go to school, and I still needed to show up and work my 8 – 10 hours at my cubical before taking our daughter to her violin lesson at UConn. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birthday","category-friends"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p39P1R-17","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":501,"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salexander.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}