I love StrongBad.  I was watching his latest e-mail at work (and fighting back tears) and I was asked what I was watching.

I can't believe everyone in the world doesn't know about this.  I must work with one of the handful of people that haven't been enlightened.

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Instead of trying to decipher the gibbon-like scrawl I call my handwriting from my journal, I spent my lunch hour catching up on blogs.

I fired a metaphor back at Jaclyn, read about Brian G.'s "ChalkGate", listened to D.C. rage against the Imagestation, tolerated Miguel's rants about capital punishment, informed myself about commas and zombies at David's, and made a mental note not to forget about Jake's birthday on Sunday.

Then I looked at the date of that post much more carefully.

"The 23rd?!  But that would mean his birthday was...last Sunday!!!"

I pondered this as I banged my head against my desk.

Jake, I'm sorry.  Happy Birthday, old friend.  It seems like it was only yesterday that we were in the Talent Show at Gilliland Middle School singing "Alternative Polka."  (If anyone is familiar with Showtime at the Apollo, that's the type of crowd we were performing for.  It didn't go over very well; the entire first row just got up and left.  But we were happy because we felt we had won a moral victory.  We were also happy because we didn't get shanked.)

Those were the days.