{"id":676,"date":"2006-09-15T17:01:59","date_gmt":"2006-09-15T17:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=676"},"modified":"2006-09-15T17:01:59","modified_gmt":"2006-09-15T17:01:59","slug":"happy_birthday_to_me_and_to_th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2006\/09\/15\/happy_birthday_to_me_and_to_th\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday to Me… and to the Armored Cavalry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is my 37th birthday, an event I’ve been anticipating with about the same degree of enthusiasm I usually reserve for defrosting the fridge. Yes, I realize that I just dated myself terribly, since I don’t know anyone who’s actually needed<\/i> to defrost their fridge in years, but I’m feeling pretty dated today anyhow, so what the hell. (Incidentally, I apologize to any youngsters out there in the InterTubes that don’t know what the hell I’m talking about<\/a>. Not to worry, it’s just grown-up stuff.)<\/p>\n


\nI don’t actually hate<\/i> my birthdays the way some people of, ahem, advancing years do, but they are difficult for me. I don’t want to get all maudlin on you — I figure last night’s entry<\/a> probably cornered that particular market for this week — but I will say that birthdays always tend to make me think of the things I thought I would’ve done by this point of my life and still have not done. They stir up a lot of restlessness and make me wonder about the choices I’ve made with my life; not surprisingly, this all tends to bring on an attack of Ye Olde Melancholie.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the birthday this year coincides with an interesting historical anniversary, and thinking about this has distracted me from falling into my usual “I’m a year older and what have I got to show for it” funk. It seems that 90 years ago today, the world’s first combat tanks rolled across a battlefield in the World War I Battle of the Somme. A detailed article<\/a> on the subject explains why they’re called “tanks” (something I’ve always wondered — their British inventors code-named them “mobile water tanks” to throw off German intelligence) and notes that of the 49 tanks that ventured into action on that first day, only two actually made it to the German lines (most of them broke down).<\/p>\n

Why did this little factoid catch my fancy? I have no idea… but it beats thinking about the novels I haven’t written and the travel destinations I haven’t visited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is my 37th birthday, an event I’ve been anticipating with about the same degree of enthusiasm I usually reserve for defrosting the fridge. Yes, I realize that I just dated myself terribly, since I don’t know anyone who’s actually needed to defrost their fridge in years, but I’m feeling pretty dated today anyhow, so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}