I saw the thread title, and the first thing that came to mind was, "Oh, shit, it's Khandu."
And, of course, it was.
Thank you, khandu....I guess.

So, yes, I do have a birthday some day this month, not that I'm going to say when, although I will say that I prefer not to deal with the "What's your sign" thing but I am NOT a Virgo. For that matter, I prefer not to deal with birthdays at all, since they generally seem to be a non-event. Most of my days are wonderful, so why do I need to celebrate birthdays?

I thought I was 52, but a few weeks ago I did the math and found out that I will be 55 this month and will therefore qualify for all sorts of senior discounts. I would have retired from my U.S. Government job this month, but Clinton and Gore pulled a Margaret Thatcher/Ronald Reagan on me and privatized me out of a job in 1996 and left me to the vagaries of the marketplace. So I quit work in 1999, and so far, I'm OK.

And I continue to find lighthouses in exotic locations - I saw lighthouses at Piraeus and Santorini in the Aegean last month. I was expecting to find one at Rhodes (not the Colossus), but I gess they tore that one down (postcards show one atop the fort at the entrance to the harbor, but I couldn't find it).

So, although I still find birthday threads, tedious, it's nice to have one of my own, I guess; and I thank everybody for the greetings, I guess.

And Spaw, I still don't understand you, but that's OK.

-Joe Offer-