50

I turn 50 today (see also turning 48, 47, 45, 43, 42, 41, 40, 39, 38, and 36; before age 36, apparently, I was young enough not to notice my age).

The day started with [[Oliver]] secretly passing a note to his vice-principal at school when I dropped him off asking her to make an announcement about my birthday, which she kindly did.

The day continued with PEI Home and School Federation-related duties at the PEI Science Fair, where I selected and then awarded special prizes. This was great fun, both because I got to have many interesting conversations with young scientists about their projects, and because, being special prizes, our awards fall outside of the normal structure of the fair, and thus, as long as they recognize projects that “focus on the total well-being of children, including health, safety and learning,” are completely left to the discretion of the judge. Such freedom! I’ll never be able to go back to regular prize judging, with its onerous rubrics and forms.

As is usually the case, I’m at my least pensive on my birthday, so I’ve no wise words for my future self. Actually, scratch that: future self, remember to look up from time to time, take stock of things, turn down a different path, try on a different hat, say hello to someone unexpected. Please report back.

Photo by Paul Kalupnieks, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.