Happy Half Century

We were tempted to ignore it, but what the heck. Today the Curmudgeon is 50 years old. That's right, we've put a half century on this body and brain, and hope to get another half century out of it before we kick off.

The good news: we've got almost as much hair as we did in college. Shoot, if you count nose and ear hair, we're ahead of the game!

Our eyesight is better than it was in college, thanks to the miracle of lasix.

We're a little heavier, but not in too bad a shape--indeed, we were really too skinny in those good ol' days.

The best news: we can't be that old, because we had our best round of golf ever on Friday, while out in California. It was a magnificent day and we had no worries or pressures, so we shot an 82, which is three strokes better than our previous personal best. Maybe in the future we'll have a chance to shoot our age.

We're also blessed with new technology that allows us to stay socially connected in our retirement--the internet, social networking sites, email, blogging.

When we were born, in 1958, it didn't seem like a primitive era, but we bet if our kids were transported back to that time, they'd be aghast: black & white TV with three channels (and no remote control); no personal computers; no electronic games; most commercial air travel by prop plane; music on vinyl discs; rotary dial phones (do kids ever wonder why we say we're "dialing" a number?).

Yet, where's all that stuff we thought we'd have by now, just like the Jetsons? The flying cars, the robot maids, the instant food, the Star Trek transporter beams, the talking computers? (In one early episode of the original Star Trek series, however, Mr. Spock has to fix the talking computer by replacing a vacuum tube.)

Okay, so now we are sounding old. Happy Birthday Curmudgeon.