Since you didn't ask, a few explanations, on this, a birthday. Heavy on the cryptic, but if someone ever said that we were supposed to be self-explanatory on our birthdays, he was shot before his message reached me.

One for each year:

1. Go intercontinental.
2. Stand on top of Great Wall. Turn to $traveling_companion and say, "Once upon a time, a random raging Mongol horde looked at this and said, 'Hmph. We'll just climb over it.'"
3. Brush up my German.
4. Finish off seeing all 50 states.
5. Figure out why in the world I'd go to North Dakota.
6. French Laundry. Dinner for one if necessary.
7. Now that I finally have contact lenses again, go snorkeling.
8. See St. Basil's in the snow.
9. Finish the novel.
10. Start the next one.
11. Drive across Canada.
12. Find some way of making the drink-and-snarkfest with Matthew a yearly event.
13. Spend at least half of dragon*con in costume.
14. Without embarrassment or shyness.
15. Find out how billboards are put up.
16. Learn to read music.
17. Continue to avoid going on a cruise of any kind.
18. Be a bit more forgiving of others. (Except when I'm talking to Matthew.)
19. Stop getting quite so twitchy when other people in the same room crunch ice.
20. Make the perfect mix CD.
21. Know what to say to my sister the next time Jeff and I visit my family.
22. Find out what the contents of a >$100 bottle of wine taste like.
23. Occasionally buy a piece of clothing not because I'm replacing something similar that I just wore out, but because it was pretty and I liked it.
24. Tone down the shyness a bit.
25. Finish Quarto.
26. Make fewer lists. Live more.
27. [Open for suggestions. Tomorrow's another day.]

My life is not lived in solitude and silence, and it is those moments of loudness and laughter that make it special. You are too many to list, but, thankfully, not too many to love.

*heart*

—Amy

(P.S. Not to pimp my own archives, but the entry from this day in 2001, 'Remember this. You'll see it again', is worth a revisit.)