I’ll be celebrating my birthday on Friday in town this year. I’ve been going south for a summer break the past few years to visit family in Alabama.
It was getting to be routine, heading down to Huntsville and spending Father’s Day with my dad and brother, my June 22 birthday with family, then Hamacon, a local anime convention they hold around this time every year at their local convention center.
I visited earlier this year, in late May for a few days. My nieces and nephews were confused, thinking the convention was arriving early this year, or something.
Hamacon usually does have quite a bit to do with my timing. They’re not a big convention but they’ve been able to bring in celebrity guests in the voice-over industry I’ve been looking to see.
June 22 has a decent historical background, beyond my birth. June 22, 1941, was when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. Judy Garland passed away the day I was born, June 22, 1969.
I knew since I was about 10 years old I shared my summer birthday with Lindsay Wagner, TV’s Bionic Woman from the ’70s. A quick Google check showed many more celebs than I realized did as well – Meryl Streep; Sen. Elizabeth Warren; Graham Greene, from “Dances with Wolves”; singer Cyndi Lauper; Freddie Prinze; Tim Russ, the Vulcan Tuvok on “Star Trek Voyager”; Bruce Campbell of “The Evil Dead”; Erin Brockovich, attorney and environmentalist; actress Amy Brenneman; author Dan Brown; film director Uwe Boll; Carson Daly. We all had to make do without birthday treats on a school day, or else a mass birthday celebration with the other summer kids in the class.
Staying home this year should help when the Fourth of July comes in a couple weeks. Mom’s cooking, holiday celebrations, and conventions tended to add quite a bit to the scale. No one-week crash diet this year to fit into my old Army uniform for the parade.
Also no big milestone plans this year. It’s my 49th, so maybe something big next year for my half century. I’ll be baking my own cake for the office, though. Come in for a slice if you want.