Happy Birthday, Dad

My father's 76 birthday. 76 sweet summers. In our church, it is traditional for babies to receive a blessing. Usually the blessing is by the child's father, but for some reason, my grandfather did not bless my father. Rather, the voice of the blessing was some other man. My grandparents were living in Boston at the time of my father's birth while my grandfather obtained his PhD in chemistry from Harvard, and started his career by teaching at MIT. In any event, the guy who blessed my father wanted to use big words. So he blessed him with all the vicissitudes of life. My father used to call his children his little vicissitudes. Anyway, happy birthday, Dad. From vicissitude number 4.

Now the stats: Yesterday, I walked 11,624 steps. Overall, as of this moment, 7:36 p.m. on August 4. 2009, I have walked 479,201 steps in 40 days.