Today was Jeffrey’s 11th birthday — but that’s not why he’s dressed up
as King Henry VIII. He had to dress that way for school. Today
happened to be book report day, and all of the students had to dress as
the characters whose biographies they were reporting on; Jeffrey chose
to read
Henry VIII and His Chopping Block
(in the “Famous Dead People” series), so he was the king. He says his
presentation went well and people enjoyed it, too.

After school, we used his birthday present, the Marvel Comics edition of
Monopoly; he won, decisively, having gotten, by sheer luck, the monopoly
consisting of
Marvel Comics #1 and Captain America #1 (Boardwalk and Park Place in the
regular edition). We’ll get even next time.

But I guess it’s just as well that Jeffrey won; you don’t want Henry
VIII to be mad at you!

Today was a big retirement day at work; a guy down the hall retired (he’d been counting down the days on his door for a while, down to small fractions earlier this week), as did a long-time colleague from the Computing Facility — she spent her last week getting a dozen or so new printers installed, though she did finish up in time for a nice going-away cake this afternoon. And one of Diane’s co-workers at the Silicon Valley Lab also retired today; he’s been telecommuting for a bit but will still be missed.

On a slightly different note, I’ve discovered a problem with lifetime subscriptions. Usually, when you subscribe to a magazine, it takes a few weeks for them to start the subscription, and it starts with whatever issue is current when they get around to it. No problem, because they’ll send you the full number of issues, and so I’ll get an issue or two after your subscription has actually expired. But with a lifetime subscription, the issues you miss at the beginning of the subscription never get made up. Sure, the publisher will probably keep sending the magazine for a while after you expire, but that doesn’t really do you much good, does it?

We ordered a pile of toys from eToys back on the 14th, and they finally delivered the last box of goodies today. Luckily, this box didn’t have anything that we had to have any time soon — it’s all stuff to have in reserve for upcoming parties so we don’t have to run to ToysRUs at the last minute. Jeffrey’s birthday present arrived in one of the earlier shipments — I’m glad eToys didn’t really mean it when they said it was out-of-stock ten days after I’d placed the order.

Tomorrow’s Jeffrey’s birthday; I suspect he’ll be easy to get moving tomorrow morning!