Today In History (part 2)

I almost titled this blog as Me! Me! Me! LOL
So among other things today marks the Chinese New year from what I gather it is a revolving day similar to that of Thanksgiving or other such days...Oh yeah and it is my birthday as well so whoopee or whatever. First and foremost I want to say thank you to Grams & and Gramps. I received their Birthday package on Friday. I have been using the noise makers to annoy many people around here. So I have planned for this blog to be similar to the one that I wrote for Gramps on his birthday... along with some other things that I have been researching. So Today in History:

January 29th in History
1802: John James Beckley is appointed the first librarian of the Library of Congress.
1834: President Jackson orders first use of US troops to suppress a labor dispute
1845: Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" first published in New York.
1861: Kansas becomes the 34th state...
1904: First athletic letters given: to University of Chicago football team.
1933: German President von Hindenburg makes big mistake, appoints Hitler chancellor
1955: William Cox buys Yankee Stadium.
1958: Charles Starkweather captured by police in Wyoming...
1969: Britain refused entry into the European Economic Community
1978: Sweden is the first country to introduce a law banning the use of aerosol sprays harmful to the ozone layer.
1986: 19.380 million shares traded in the New York Stock Exchange.

After reading those I realize that my birthday really doesn't inspire great moments of history (sorry Kansas) There are a few famous people that share my birthday as well:

In 1737 Thomas Paine, political essayist
In 1756 Henry (Light Horse Harry) Lee, cavalryman
In 1823 Franklin Gardner, Confederate major general, Fought at Shiloh and Port Hudson
In 1843 William McKinley, 25th President (1897-1901)
In 1850 Lawrence Hargrave, invented the box kite
In 1860 Anton Chekhov (in Russia), writer (The Cherry Orchard)
In 1874 John D. Rockefeller Jr, financier, founded University of Chicago
In 1880 William Claude Dukenfield (better known as W.C. Fields), comedian
In 1901 Allen B. DuMont, perfected the first commercially practical cathode ray tube
In 1915 Victor Mature, actor In 1918 John Forsythe, actor
In 1939 Germaine Greer, (in Melbourne, Australia)
In 1942 Claudine Longet (in France), actor
In 1943 Katharine Ross (in Hollywood, CA)
In 1945 Tom Selleck (in Detroit, MI), actor (Magnum, PI; Lassiter)
In 1951 Ann Jillian, (in Cambridge, MA), actor
In 1954 Oprah Winfrey, actor, television host
In 1958 Judy Norton-Taylor (in Santa Monica, CA), actor (The Waltons)
In 1985 Athina Onassis


So there are 18 people that I have never met that share with me one day, Kind of silly huh? There have been quite a few birthdays around here the past couple of weeks and I know of at least two or three more in the coming weeks so I want to say Happy Birthday to everyone. Haji, Barbie, RFG, Me (see I'm important as well) And the man with the Big V8 (sort of a private joke) and I guess I should mention the Lt as well... sigh.

So I had some time on my hands earlier and I did some calculations these are by no means exact but by using common averages i.e. an average of eight hours of sleep a night an 8 hour school day for 9 months for 14 years ... 3 hours per day on meals... and a 10 hour work day over 11 years and this is what I came up with... I have spent:

8 years, 6 months 4 days 2 hours and 9 minutes sleeping
2 years 4 months 8 days 7 hours and 6 minutes at school
6 years 7 months 1 day 2 hours and 32 minutes at work.
3 years, 2 months, 4 days 10 hours and 9 and a half minutes eating
Which after adding them all together accounts for:
20 years 7 months 17 days 21 hours 56 and a half minutes

So here is my question what was I doing with the remaining time...? Have I really spent almost 5 and a half years doing nothing? How depressing is that thought? I was going to add how much time I have spent watching movies but if I divulged that information you all would think that I never worked.

So here is the Rub Birthdays come and go. I just find myself wondering if I don't put too much into them. Growing up I waited all year for it and was almost always disappointed by the day. (with two major exceptions my 13th Birthday my sister threw a surprise birthday party and then 4 years later some friends from church through a surprise party for my seventeenth. Both were unexpected and greatly appreciated.) The Past 5 years my birthday is usually the last thing on my mind... on my 21st I went to a bar and ordered my first drink, on the way home I learned a friend of mine died in an accident on the way home from the bar. And the four years following that I was in the military whether I was training or just working it never failed that I ended up on my birthday alone. I am not trying to inspire pity or someone to feel sorry for me. I just wonder why I look forward to the almost guaranteed disappointment every year.... weird huh?

Random Fact of the blog...
My Birthday is 35 days after Christmas, 28 days After New Years and always on the same day of week as those holidays. And My 18th Birthday is the only year that the Super bowl was celebrated on the same day...