Why thank you Kathryn. And thanks for all the email folks. No need to continue sending birthday wishes, though they are greatly appreciated despite their mailbox clogging side effects. Of course, a great birthday present would be for every Corner reader to purchase at least one more of a certain you-know-what. If you already have a copy, surely you know some deserving soul who could use one. And, seriously, if every person who reads the Corner bought one copy today or this weekend, I would definitely be #1 on the NYT and Amazon lists again (seriously, I know the math). And that would make a wonderful birthday present and it would annoy all the right people.

A few more random birthday thoughts. I’m 39 — yikes! This reminds me that I’ve now lived in NR-land for 10 years, a quarter of my life, the amount of time Alec Baldwin was allotted to take the SAT. Who knew that when I saved Rich Lowry’s life in that prison yard riot it would lead to this?

For most of my life, March 21 marked the first day of Spring — the vernal equinox (not to be confused with a certain supervillain). But because of the dang bad math of the cosmologists it no longer is and won’t be again until something like 2100. This ticks me off.

We all know that birthdays get progressively worse after you hit, say, 12 or 13 (leaving bar mitzvahs out of it) with a few exceptions like your 21st b-day, when you can finally sell your fake I.D. to a fifteen year-old dork and drink legally!

But what you cannot really appreciate unless you’ve got kids is how really superterrificawesome it is to have a kid on their birthday. Not only is it this incredibly intense nostalgic reminder of how much you enjoyed birthdays when you were a kid, but it’s just so much more enjoyable to watch your own kid really enjoy their birthday. When you’re a kid birthdays are intensely selfish events, much as youth itself is a very selfish time. Every thing’s about you. As you get older, you certainly still have selfish impulses, but you reach diminishing returns in terms of the joys fulfilling such impulses bring. Getting a new toy, no matter how cool or grown-up, can’t compete with how good it feels to see your daughter (actually, my daughter) light up when she gets one. (Nothing in the preceding paragraph should indicate to the Fair Jessica that I’m opposed to getting a really cool massage chair and state-of-the-art game console).

Many of the items on my old things-I-must-do-before-I’m-40 lists are beyond reach — and even desire. Alas, I shall never master the dark art of Ninjitsu. I won’t be a mild mannered reporter taken hostage in a women’s prison, as imagined by the producers of Caged Heat. And so on. Still, I’m pondering whether I should compose a list of Things I Need To Do Before I Turn 40 (“How about ‘Learn humility,’ then you’ll be perfect” — The Couch, sarcastically). It might make a good piece next year.