Today is my 38th birthday. My father’s birthday was yesterday, January 8—the same day as Elvis (who would have been 70 this year). I, on the other hand, have the dubious honor of sharing a birthday with Richard Nixon.

This is, intentionally, one of those low-key birthdays. No party, cake, cards, or presents; maybe we’ll go out to see a movie or something, but that’s about it. Morgen and I put all our holiday/birthday efforts into the Patagonia trip instead, which is perfectly fine with me. I had a big celebration when I turned 30, and another when I turned 33 1/3—a third of a century! But these years between significant milestones don’t seem to require much fanfare.

This is a milestone of sorts, however: my official transition into my mid-late thirties. Morgen, having just turned 30, doesn’t need to say she’s in her early thirties; it’s just plain 30. In our family, we say that the “early” years of a decade are the ones ending in 1, 2, and 3; the “mid” years are 4, 5, and 6; and the “late” years are 7, 8, and 9. But then we subdivide further for clarity: the earliest year of any triplet is “early,” the middle year “mid-,” and the last year “late.” Thus a 21-year-old man would be said to be in his early early twenties; a 46-year-old woman would be in her late mid-forties, I’m in my mid-late thirties, and so on. It’s the late late years I think none of us looks forward to, but the reward just ahead is getting to use “early early” again.

Morgen and I have returned from a fantastic trip to Patagonia, about which I’ll be writing a great deal more in the coming days and weeks. We got back on Saturday, but haven’t had much of an opportunity to write yet because of the time change, jet lag, general travel weariness, and the 3,789,431 pieces of email, snail mail, and voicemail waiting for me.

However, I did want to say that I’ve settled on a New Year’s resolution. This is a bit unusual for me; I usually don’t make resolutions because when I do they’re always far too ambitious and I end up failing at them within a week or two. Even so, at the end of the year I habitually think about all the things in my life I’d like to be different in the coming year—you know, be healthier, earn more money, spend more time with family and friends, and so on. This time, it occurred to me that by changing just one thing I could potentially solve a great many problems. So my resolution is:

I will get plenty of sleep in 2005.

I’m leaving “plenty” as a vague amount because I really can’t quantify it in hours, but I do know for certain that I got far too little sleep in 2004. This, in turn, led to stress, grumpiness, inability to concentrate, and probably contributed to my getting sick a couple of times. There was also a story in the news a few weeks ago about how lack of sleep was found to contribute indirectly to weight gain because certain appetite-suppressing hormones were not being produced in sufficient quantities or something. So I think that if I get enough sleep this year, my waking hours will be happier, less stressful, and more productive. (“Like taking a vacation every day!”) I’ll probably be able to remember my dreams better. Maybe I’ll lose a few pounds, which would be OK. And with any luck my energy level/ch’i/mojo/overall health will increase too.

Of course, I’ve not done so well on this in these first few days of the year because I’m still trying to reset my internal clock five hours back (and 14+ hours of flying time didn’t help either), but I’m still hopeful of achieving success.

New review: Review of Take Control of Panther, Volume 1 (PDF; page 61) by Harry Babad in the January, 2005 edition of macCompanion