Today’s my Mom’s birthday. Although I guess it’s probably more accurate to call it the “anniversary of her birthday”, since she stopped accruing birthdays last April.

And I’ve been acutely aware of the significance of the date all day — ironically, one of the things I’ve done today is work with my brother on planning her unveiling, which will be a very small event. He talked with the Rabbi in Richmond about it and was told that it would only be 15 minutes long, which matches the 15 hours or so of round-trip travel time that would be required over the space of three days.

I could hear my Mom’s voice telling me “don’t be silly!” (well, she wouldn’t have worded it exactly that way!), and I think I may listen. She’ll still be there later this year when we can make a real trip to Richmond with time for visiting and sightseeing and all that good stuff (and if she’s not still there, well…..).

This was the fifth year we’ve hosted a Super Bowl party (by an odd coincidence, we bought our HDTV just in time for Super Bowl 2003). As usual, not everyone paid attention to the game; in fact, the kids spent most of the time in a different room. But when commercials came on, everyone ran in to watch.

It was pretty disappointing (well, except for the TD on the opening kickoff return). And the commercials weren’t all that great, either; about the only ones I still remember are the FedEx “Office on the Moon” and the Emerald Nuts commercial with Robert Goulet as an evil office spirit. There were a bunch of jungle commercials (I think they were mostly office-based), and I know Bud Light had a few spots, but I don’t remember them. Even GoDaddy’s ad was subdued.

I miss the bubble days.