yonmei

06:08 pm: Happy birthday, <lj user
After having had a story like

'When I was a child,' Ford said, 'I wanted to be a travel writer. I wanted to go to places no one I knew had ever been. I wanted to find out new things. I wanted to stand on worlds unknown to oxygen-breathing lifeforms and see dim and ancient suns flaring up above the horizon, illuminating a landscape I could see but never touch with my bare hand. I wanted to find the most sophisticated restaurants known to venerable civilisations and write scathing reviews of their menus that would be read by millions. I wanted to be sent on assignment to war-zones so that I could hide out in the pub for six months faking reports and claiming my danger money. I wanted to meet exotic and beautiful people and persuade them to go to bed with me. I wanted to use my job to talk my way into the back-stage parties at cutting-edge rock concerts. I wanted to make a name for myself, one that people could actually pronounce. I wanted to do all that and go home and have my cousins look up to me as the coolest cousin they had, even though I had bloody stiff opposition on that front. I wanted to be the greatest asset and the greatest embarrassment my family had ever had to endure. And now I am an out-of-work actor, scraping a living on what the government of this piddlingly small and small-minded country's government thinks is an acceptable amount of money for a single man to slowly starve on. Is that the answer you wanted to hear .... (by daegaer: go read!)

written for you, all other gifts will seem anti-climactic: but this, with many good wishes for many happy returns, anyway.