Today marks my fifty-ninth birthday. Fifty-nine sounds old but then again there is no way I could have fit all of my adventures and projects in any less time. I feel as if I am just now, at last, able to not simply fake it as I bumble through my projects. I'm now ready to start on my best work yet. After all this time I have gathered enough skills and experience to design and build anything I can imagine. It took all these years of practice drawing, and working with my hands to get where I am. With each project I still reach just a little further than the last. Every new project puts me and my crew on the edge and often well beyond our current abilities and past experience. This is what gets me out of bed each morning, eager to go out to the shop. I still have so much to learn and I learn plenty each and every day.

Fifty-nine is but a number. It seems like I am a young man but blinked somewhere along the way and many years instantly added up. I'll only be truly old when I let myself be. I still have have far to go. By the time I accomplish all I desire and dream I will undoubtably be much older yet.

So today we'll celebrate my fifty-ninth birthday. At supper time we'll have a nice birthday dinner as per our family custom. I'll purposely make myself a little scarce around the house through the middle part of the day as Phoebe puts all of her top secret plans in motion. I have no idea of what she and the rest of my family are planning but I have no doubt it will be a fun adventure.

Life is good.

-grampa dan