A Quarter of a Century Old

Today is my 25th birthday. This afternoon (barring some tragic disaster), the minute will pass after which I will have been alive for one quarter of a century. A quarter of a century. It feels like a significant milestone. I suppose it only seems special because of the base of the number system we happen to use (though if we used base five, I'd be 100!), which is based on the number of fingers we have, so really my 25th birthday is only special because of primate hand anatomy. But that's how we primates are, so 25 is a notable number of years to have behind me.

The only material thing I gain at age 25 is the ability to rent a car without incurring an extra insurance charge. I guess it beats the nothing I got when I turned 22, 23, and 24. But I also now have to deal with the fact that I can no longer claim to be in my "early twenties". Oh dear... I am now closer to 30 than I am to 20. Ack! When did that happen? Oh, right: Today.

My last birthday I posted some baby pictures of myself, and I thought I'd do the same this year, so you can see how far I've come. These three photos are from my personal collection, which means that they were the three baby photos of me that my parents were willing to part with. Probably because they had multiple copies.

I love the expression on my face in this one. Something about it makes me look a lot like my dad. Maybe he as the photographer was making the same face at me, and I was mimicking him.


Looks like corn on the cob for the toothless baby. Mmm.


In this one I'm a bit older. A happy toddler on a very exciting slide.


Today I will hopefully be receiving my big birthday present in the mail, bought with birthday money from my grandparents and parents, plus a nice credit card rewards check (yay for free money!). I will finally have a new camera! After over two years of whiny if legitimate excuses for poor photos ("My camera screen doesn't work so I can't see what the photo looks like or change the settings, waaah!"), at last I will be able to improve my photography. The camera that I await is the Panasonic Lumix TS2 in lovely turquoise blue. 14.1 megapixels, 4.6x optical zoom, 720p HD video, plus it's waterproof to 33 feet, shockproof to 6 feet, freezeproof to 14 F, and dustproof (which generally comes with it being waterproof). I can't wait for it to arrive so I can start to fall in love with it (makes it sound a little like a mail-order husband or something...).

I'm not sure what I have planned for the day other than going out to dinner with my parents, grandparents, and the Housemate. As of writing this post, the parents (and grandparents) still don't know that the Housemate is also the Boyfriend. Oh, Eleni, for all your 25 years you are still many years away from wisdom. Fun times will be had by all.