My Coolest Birthday Present

First and foremost, I've got my official reviews of Transformers and Ratatouille up over at my official site, so go read them when you've got a chance.

And now, I want to tell you about the coolest birthday present I got. It was given to me by my sister. Back when she was still learning to be a teacher, she had to make it as a project, and she started tailoring it with an eye towards giving it to me. The project was to choose a number, and then find as many facts as you can about that number.

So, what it is, is this poster, and in the centre is a caricature of me, drawn by a friend of mine. And, all around it, it lists the significance of the number 7 in various cultures, religions, mythologies, and pop culture.

Yeah, it had a lot to do with the fact that my birthday was on 07/07/07 this year, but that's just the half of it. See, the whole story is, I was born on 07/07/77 at 7:07 PM and I weighed 7 pounds 7 ounces. Ever since that weird coincidence, the number 7 occasionally pops up at weird times in my life.

Western superstition tells us that 7 is a lucky number. Numerologists will tell you that there's nothing special about 7. But this what my sister dug up.



7 is...

- the fourth prime number
- the smallest happy number
- the atomic number of nitrogen
- the number of heavens in Islam
- the number of stars in Ursa Major
- the number of islands that made up Atlantis
- the number of days in the week
- the number of notes on the music scale
- the number of colours in the rainbow
- the number of points on a sheriff's star

And let's not forget...

- a series of 7 is called a heptad
- 7 Deadly Sins
- 7 Virtues of Man
- 007
- Seven Dwarfs
- Seven of Nine

And, once you factor in all the revisions to the calendar, 7 BC is the most likely birth year of you-know-who.

I still need to find a good place to hang that poster....

Second-coolest gift I got had to be from my friend Jo. She's currently globetrotting, and with me loving the Olympics, I have a standing request for any kind of Olympic kitsch from any former host city she might wander through. She's in Australia right now, and she got me a special Australian $5 coin that was minted to commemorate Sydney 2000. (I also have a standing request for a hot Aussie surfer girl, but apparently, those are too hard to get through customs.)

Also worth noting is that it was heavily hinted that I'd be getting a digital camera. But, because I know so much about technology, I tend to be quite...selective when it comes to such things. So, I was given a $150 gift card for Best Buy and instructions to buy myself one.

And, since it's not a trip to the city unless I get a boatload of DVDs, I also got a boatload of DVDs. I'll tell you about those tomorrow.