davidn

First of all, as I make sure to write on this day of the year, happy birthday to

sleigh82. And also Glenn Barry of Kamelot. And while I'm at it, half my year at school who had birthdays from the 10th to 20th of November.

Whitney has excelled herself - after opening two packs of biscuits last night, I woke up in the morning to find a hand-cut-out "Happy birthday" banner pinned up across the bedroom corridor, and a number of other presents. These included two jars of Loyd Grossman korma sauce (which is considerably more pleasant than his voice) and a large box of Fox biscuits.

Her parents have given me a year-long subscription to the UK Retro Gamer magazine, to help stop me missing Britain quite so much. The best bit about it is that the issue I got this morning had a section on independent freeware games, where a number of creations from the Click community were featured - including Noitu Love, Within a Deep Forest and Lyle in Cube Sector. (I wasn't.)

But the best of the lot is the little card that arrived in the post this morning. "Permanent Resident Card: The person identified by this card is authorized to work and reside in the U.S." I don't look too happy in the photo, which is rather fitting for the months of turmoil and disaster that I was going through while trying to get it. I'm off to Social Security tomorrow to get myself a number and be plotted into the system forever.

Oh, and there's also the small matter of the $5,000 cheque that the health insurance people are giving back to us because I got a job faster than we thought. That should come in useful.