40

I turned 40 yesterday.

40 is an interesting number.

In the bible alone:

• Rain fell 40 days and 40 nights wiping out all life on Earth minus those on Noah's little boat.
• Moses lead his people around the desert for 40 years.
• Moses ended up on Mt. Sinai a few times for 40 day / night periods.
• Jesus was presented at the temple 40 days after his birth.
• Jesus fasted 40 days and 40 nights before the devil tempted him.
• It was 40 days after the resurrection of Jesus until the ascension of Jesus.
• Lent is a period of 40 days before Easter (not sure this is Biblical ... this is my blog and I'm putting it in a biblical category)
• The are many many other references to 40 not only in the Judaic / Christian faiths and other major religions. I am not (cannot) list them all.

40 is an octagonal number, and as the sum of the first four pentagonal numbers, it is a pentagonal pyramidal number. Adding up some subsets of its divisors (e.g., 1, 4, 5, 10 and 20) gives 40, hence 40 is a semiperfect number. [those last 2 sentences were copied directly from wikipedia]

One issue with turning 40 is that it brings me to the realization that my life is almost 1/4 over.

I used to think 40 was old, but I do not anymore. I do not think I feel any older now than I did 10 years ago. I'm still trying to figure out what I want to "be" when I grow up, so I cannot be too old. Although, as I am 1/4 aged, maybe I should figure that out. I'm thinking maybe something in computers. I just am not sure there is a future there. My nickname is still "Sheppy". Does that sound like the nickname of an old guy?

When I came downstairs on my birthday, my beautiful wife was making me breakfast. This is not a normal occurrence on a weekday. I got 40 kisses each from my wife and 2 kids right before I got my breakfast (120 total kisses). I even got a candle in my omelet. I blew it out like a champ and made my first birthday wish. I cannot tell you what the wish was, but I will say it would make my wife blush if she knew.

Of course my wife and I had to go to work. The kids had to go to school. There was nothing special about the work day except I got a bunch of "happy birthday" messages via email and on facebook.

Getting home was great. It is always fun to see the kids excited and they were very excited to give me gifts (various pieces of artwork) and shower me with love. I'm a lucky guy. My wife got me "Brewing Classic Styles" by Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer, which is a book I've been considering buying for myself. Now I won't have to. She also got me a get-away weekend starting later today. The kids are staying with their friends Miles and David, and our neighbors (all with multiple fire arms and other weapons) will be watching the house in case random Internet thugs come across this blog entry.

Tyler and Connor tricked me into thinking we were going out to get birthday candles and batteries when, in fact, we left to go to the Outback Steak house where I had a very nice meal. Then we came home for cake and ice cream (yummy). I was so busy being showered with love and attention, I did not even have myself any SheppyBrews yesterday.

My sister and her family sent me sheets of their middle child's math homework on them. As far as I could tell, he got all the answers correct. They were not graded, so I hope that he doesn't get in trouble for not turning them in. Actually, the homework came on the back of sheets of paper talking about the other thing in the package: Crafty Caps -- bottle caps that say "Sheppy Brew 40" with a tiny little picture of the mountains that are on the back of one of my label styles on them. So a few of my next beer batches will have some of these customized bottle caps on them. I'm not sure if the homework or the instructions or the bottle caps are the actual gift that my sister was so proud of. By the way, sis, you can let people know now what you got me, they were in the mailbox last night.

It looks like this:

only smaller.

So, as you can probably tell, I had a great 40th birthday. I am a lucky guy with a completely charmed kind of life.