Can I compete with this?

So I have to write stories about lame business events as a part of my job. This week, it was the annual chamber dinner, which actually turned out to be very entertaining because an old firebrand liberal returned to Rockford to tell the town's stodgy business set to stop resisting the future and start trying to make this city a place where young professionals want to live instead of escape. Yeah, that'll happen.
But as I've said before in this blog, being a reporter in your hometown affords you many opportunities to run into people you went to school with, or got into trouble with, or in the case of this dinner, dated off and on for years.
So the first person I recognize at this banquet (besides the photographer) is an old girlfriend. Quick background: There was a brief window of time when I would have considered marrying her if we'd stayed together. But we didn't, which was undoubtedly better for everyone concerned. Instead, she went on to become a teacher at our old high school and then married the father of one of her students. Yeah, I know. He must be 17 years older than her. And they just had a baby, too.
Anyway, I had heard all this through the grapevine, but the chamber dinner was my first chance to finally meet the guy. I'll let you decide whether she made the right choice. And I'll remind you that I am a 30-year-old journalist who took seven years to finish a degree at a compass-point state university. That, and I make a little bit more than a carpet installer. But maybe I should just emphasize the 30-year-old part.
Not that I'm so shallow as to compare myself...

Another milestone?

I always get excited when my odometer nears a multiple of 10,000. Of course, this got less rare when I was commuting into the suburbs and putting 2,000 miles on my old car every month. But I still watch the miles click away as it gets to 97, 98, 99 -- narrowly avoiding accidents as I gaze at the dial hoping to catch the actual switch.
Yesterday my new (used) car hit 80,000 miles. Of course, it seems exciting, but then I realized I was alone and no one else could witness the historic event. Aha, camera phone! So, there it is.
Don't think about the fact that the number's significance is arbitrary. I mean, why is 80,000 more important than say, 68,391? It's not, we just assign it a higher value.

Thirty and everything after

I turned 30 yesterday. Last week, 30 seemed kind of old, like the mantle of true adulthood would finally touch my shoulders. Now that I'm here, it just seems like more of the same plodding, meandering extension of adolescence where I don't know how I got here and I only have a vague idea about what I'm doing.
At what age do the angels come down from heaven blowing trumpets to bestow the gift of wisdom on you?