My birthday, and an R2-D2 mailbox in Greensboro!

So two days ago it was my birthday. Which in recent times that's been a pretty rough thing for me to go through. I guess it's because a few years ago I spent my birthday as a pallbearer for my grandmother's funeral and the last thing approximating physical contact with her was carrying her casket to the graveside. Since then I've never been able to fully dis-associate birthdays from funerals, life from death. And my grandmother and I had been close, too.

There have been times that it hasn't been so bad though. The following year after her funeral, during the first year of our relationship, Lisa went far in giving me a fun, upbeat, positive birthday. That included going to Olympic Park in Atlanta, then meeting up with my life-long best friend Chad where he worked at the CNN Building and he showed us around to a lot of places that you'd never see on a guided tour of the place, and then Lisa took me to see the annual Atlanta Passion Play put on by First Baptist Church there (the one that Charles Stanley pastors).

That was a good birthday. This year... not so much. Guess it's because of a lot of things that have come crashing down all at once lately. It was enough to jerk me back into that "birthdays = death" thing that I've tried so hard to shake off. But I was able to manage to have a little bit of fun all the same...

One good thing that I'll remember this birthday for, was that it was the day I finally got to see one of those cute new R2-D2 mailboxes for myself (click on the link to see if there's one in your town). Until this weekend I was ready to go to Raleigh, Charlotte, Asheville or maybe Roanoke to find one, but my friend Darth Larry told me the day before that there was definitely one in Greensboro. He told me where to find it (and here's his report and photos of the thing). So yesterday afternoon Lisa and I went to the corner of West Market Street and College Place (this is the front entrance to Greensboro College, if it helps any) and found our little Artoo unit...

Here's a shot of the intersection that Artoo is next too (along with Lisa)...

Here's what the back of our faithful astro-droid looks like...

Here's Lisa re-creating a famous scene from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (maybe we should have found her a white Leia outfit and done her hair up in buns for this pic?)...

And finally, to prove that I was really there (note my custom-built lightsaber hanging from my belt)...

When the new Star Wars stamps from the U.S. Postal Service go on sale on May 25th, I'm thinking of wearing my full Jedi costume to the post office when I buy some. Maybe I'll have photos to post of that too, if I can find someone willing to go with me who won't be afraid to associate with a guy in a Jedi getup :-)