Goodbye, Youth

That's me, with an Atlantic Sharpnose shark at the Gulf of Mexico. God, I love sharks!

I am spending my last evening as a 35-year-old with my friends. My computer was sick, so Brandon fixed it. Turns out my cat had been sitting on the keyboard and pushed a button that inactivated all the keys. What a relief I didn't have a virus.
   I recently went on a week-long collegiate field trip to the Gulf Coast, and I was eating lunch with a pretty young student from my school. "How old are you?" she asked me. I replied, "35." She looked at me for a second and said, "Well, at least you're not 40." I blinked at her a couple of times then continued eating my lunch. What the crap? There are worse things than being 40. I remember when I thought turning 30 would be a horrible thing. Shortly before that happened, one of my best friends from high school committed suicide. Turning 30 was indeed painless, as my 50-something friend Sandy told me. Losing my friend was what hurt. 
  I've done a few things over the past year that I really enjoy. Things that I didn't have as options in my youth. I finally made friends with some shark researchers and was invited to go out fishing with them in the Gulf. Oh, YES! I went shark fishing with professionals! (See photo above.) The pretty young thing from my school wasn't invited. 
   I signed up to go for a night scuba dive trip next weekend. Since I live in a land-locked state, scuba diving takes a bit of planning. I miss it and hope to become a lot more involved.I really haven't found much that surpasses scuba diving in terms of fun and adventure.
  I was recently promoted at work and the tech services people came to my office today and gave me a brand new desk computer with a large monitor. It was quite a nice upgrade. Now if someone would just clean up my office for me...