If you didn't catch this, yesterday was my birthday. I turned 31 in a whirlwind of activity.

Friday morning I was at a department retreat and I received birthday wishes over breakfast. Friday afternoon I was back at work and by 4pm I'd donned a black robe for graduation and most of the clothes in my closet--it was cold yesterday afternoon in Sofia. By 7:30pm Friday, I was congratulating the Class of 2012 on having graduated from high school.

And by 8:30 pm I was late to my own birthday party. <em>Oops!</em> Luckily the majority of my friends also work at ACS and were also at graduation. It wasn't like I was really late--maybe just 15 minutes late and potentially in Bulgaria this is more or less on time... Anyhow, I ate a salad and most of a small pizza, drank two celebratory beers, chatted with my friends and that was that.

Or so I thought. Of course, it really wasn't.

<img class="alignleft" title="Me and Cold Baby" src="http://wallawallalocal.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/young-carolyn-1.jpg?w=600&amp;h=900" alt="" width="384" height="576" />It turns out that my dAd wrote <a href="http://wallawallalocal.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/yadhtrib-snylorac-ta-kcab-gnikool/" target="_blank">a post about me on his blog</a>. A really nice post about me. It has baby pictures of me and everything. The baby picture here is on of my favorites. In my shopping cart you can see a doll without any clothes on. That's Cold Baby. She lost all of her clothes early on (well except for her baby bonnet) in my childhood but I continued to love her and take her every where with me. It turns out when you take a doll around without any clothes on, people will ask you: isn't your baby cold? As a result I started calling her Cold Baby.

Once I nearly lost Cold Baby. On my way into the public library, we stopped to look at the fountain in front of the library. I put Cold Baby down. At this point, I had a baby brother as well so Cold Baby was wearing a giant baby dipper. Anyhow, I didn't realize that Cold Baby was missing until we got home from the library. I was frantic and my mom called the library. Sure enough, they had Cold Baby. Apparently an elderly man came in carrying Cold Baby by the dipper and told the woman at circulation that he was sure someone was going to be missing this doll in the near future. The librarian took the doll for safe keeping and later that day I was reunited with Cold Baby. For the record, I still have Cold Baby tucked away in my things.

Anyhow back to the blog post, it starts off this way:
<blockquote>Carolyn is sooo old that she was born before the modern technological world was even invented.  In 1981, the first mass marketed personal computers were less than four years old, IBM released their first PC, and the internet and cell phones were still to be commercially developed.

The pictures I took when Carolyn was born took several days to be developed and printed.  There were no One Hour Photo Stands in those days (and once again there are none)…</blockquote>
Aside from the really nice things that my dAd has to say, what's so wonderful about this whole post from my dAd is the form. It's hard to believe that he's sending his birthday wishes to me in the form of a blog post. It's like a modern greeting card--for the world to read. Thanks  so much dAd and MoM. I assume that this post required some team work as it's clear to me that dAd wrote the post especially given the backward nature of the first few lines but I suspect that MoM helped you scan those baby photos.

My sister (and hundreds of friends) sent me birthday greetings by way of facebook: Happy Birthday to my brave, wise, and funny big sister, Carolyn, who has always believed in me, even when I haven't believed in myself. <em>What?!</em> Even rereading her post now to simply cut and paste it into this post is enough to make me tear up. What an incredibly kind thing to say.

Of course, all of my friends and their wishes and greetings on facebook also brought a smile to my face. The world seems much, much smaller on day like this. It's pretty crazy to see the overlap of all of your friends in your life--from high school to college, sorority life to post-college life, German-language classmates to long term roommates, friends you'e made yourself to friends other friends made and then became your friends, current work friends to one-time colleagues, as well as Bulgarian friends to friends you've met traveling. But really the list could go on and on.

I got text messages from friends. A special shout-out and thanks to I. and E. who I met and know through this blog!!

What a wonderful birthday.

I'd like to end with this: Thank for all of the warm wishes I received on my birthday. It's incredible to have so many friends from all over the world and from so many different stages in my life. I wouldn't be who I am without each of you. Thank you for inspiring me to be the best version of myself!! Much love, Carolyn