I have explicit instructions this year not to post about how amazed I am at his age because: 'It happens every year, John, honestly. It cannot be a surprise.' I told him to wait till he was older, and he reiterated his intention never ever to reproduce. I pointed out that he would probably, once in a while, encounter children anyway, and he said he'd make it a point not to be amazed by the process of aging.
Fair enough. I think he may possibly have mentioned this last year, but as I explained to him I am ancient and forgetful now, and he'll have to be patient with me...
So I won't say I'm amazed, but I will say I'm proud of what an amazing young man he's grown into, of his patience and fortitude and of the effort he puts into everything he does. He's also great fun to have around and has somehow developed the ability to get Sherlock to listen to him, so he probably qualifies as a superhero at this point.
He also has exams to study for, so we've only got him for the the afternoon, but he'll be home for half term at the end of the month. I asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday, and he said he planned on donating his body for medical research...which is something you can do when you're 17, so I assume he's only signing up for it, not handing himself over immediately.
Before that though, we're all having lunch and going for a ride on the bikes if the weather's decent, fingers crossed.
Also I believe it's Mother's Day in the US, so happy Mother's Day to you - I hope it's a good one!
Fair enough. I think he may possibly have mentioned this last year, but as I explained to him I am ancient and forgetful now, and he'll have to be patient with me...
So I won't say I'm amazed, but I will say I'm proud of what an amazing young man he's grown into, of his patience and fortitude and of the effort he puts into everything he does. He's also great fun to have around and has somehow developed the ability to get Sherlock to listen to him, so he probably qualifies as a superhero at this point.
He also has exams to study for, so we've only got him for the the afternoon, but he'll be home for half term at the end of the month. I asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday, and he said he planned on donating his body for medical research...which is something you can do when you're 17, so I assume he's only signing up for it, not handing himself over immediately.
Before that though, we're all having lunch and going for a ride on the bikes if the weather's decent, fingers crossed.
Also I believe it's Mother's Day in the US, so happy Mother's Day to you - I hope it's a good one!
107 comments:
Many happy returns, Mycroft! Have an enjoyable celebratory afternoon.
(And hey, who knows? You may, at some point in the future, find yourself an otherwise ideal partner who has committed the imprudence of having a child or two--these things have been known to happen!)
Happy birthday Mycroft. Hope you have a wonderful day. Maybe on the next bike ride you will be on your very own bike now that you can get a proper one. :)
Best of luck with all your exams too, I'm sure you'll be brilliant.
Have a great day everyone & happy mother's day to anyone celebrating today. :)
Anthea had offered to teach him to drive, too.... Terrifying! ;)
Happy birthday Mycroft!! Hope you have a great day and a great year. 17 isn't that far in the past for me and I remember it being particularly enjoyable.
I've been absent a long time from the blogs so it's nice to come back on a happy occasion! Belated congratulations on your wedding John and L, I'm glad to see everyone's doing so well.
Hey Jaws, thank you! Hope your bit of West London is as sunny as the bit we're in!
Beautifully sunny but I'm stuck inside writing a dissertation...enjoy the weather for me!
Happy Birthday Mycroft!
Enjoy learning to drive. I'm sure you won't do to John and Lestrade after your first lesson what the daughter did after hers "It was great Mum. I drove at 50mph"
Happy birthday Mycroft :-)
...SH, you're talking to a young man about to be trained to drive by someone who can do pursuit driving, J-turns, and probably TPACs for all I know.... if he ONLY goes at 50 I think I'll be relieved!! But I also can't think of anyone better suited to teach him.
Good luck with the dissertation, Jaws, I hope it's going well.
L - I see SH's point though - I'm not quite sure I want to know everything that Anthea teaches him!
The ultimate in defensive driving training!
Danger - I don't want to know even half of the things Anthea gets up to ;)
And yeah, good luck, Jaws! I'm sure they designed exam revision to be done just when the weather was turning nice to weed out the ones not committed to studying.
Driving taught by Anthea sounds amazing! I can only advise not doing what I did with my brand new car when I was learning, namely smashing it through a brick wall at 12mph.
Thanks! And L I think that makes sense, I've spent the past 4 years of med school revising Christmas holidays AND the summer...almost like we were going to be responsible for people's lives or something!
.....wait a second.....
Happy Birthday Mycroft! Have a lovely afternoon :-)
John - I know how you feel. Time's an odd beast - a day can last forever and years can pas in the blink of an eye... Sometimes I struggle to really accept that I'm middle-aged now, let alone reconcile the fact that one of my nephews is a grown man with children of his own.
L - did you just change your profile pic?
Happy birthday, Mycroft! I hope this years brings many happy occasions and lots of adventures to you!
I hope the rest of you are doing well, and enjoying the sunny weather. I recently acquired a puppy, and there's rather a lot more pee in my house than there used to be. The outdoors is sounding marvelous right now!
Jaws - you're in medical school? I salute you. And people like you. To strive and study so hard for something which will truly make a difference in people's lives, and from such a young age, is certainly a worthy cause.
Piplover - I think we got off lightly, with Maf being quite easy to train on the peeing front! Otherwise I dread to think what state John's hair would've been in...
Nameless - I did. I thought the other one didn't quite show how grey I really am! Thought it was due and update.
L- I kind of wish the peeing was all coming from the dog, but my cat has decided to take exception to me introducing such a creature into his home. Thankfully, things are washable, so I'm not too concerned about it. But it would make my life easier if we could all just get along, lol.
Ha, if I'd known that was the right way to protest an interloper in the house I'd've taken action!
Mycroft has told us he's booked his CBT (that's motorbike training, not therapy or...the other thing it can stand for) for half term :)
Happy birthday Mycroft! Hope you had a nice day - and have fun learning to drive!
Oh what a wonderful morning....
Happy belated birthday, Mycroft! I wish I'd had an Anthea to teach me to drive - I might have actually progressed past a Learner's licence by now...
Nice profile pic, Greg. I find my hair is silvering nicely at the edges of the temples and the nape of the neck, and not much anywhere else. Won't take much longer for the rest to go though.
Oh, what a beautiful day!
(It's supposed to go up to 87F here today--hello summer!)
Oh also L and John, I hope none of your friends/colleagues were injured in the recent riots...
And that someone is enjoying the sunshine for me
I have been out in the sun, but with a search team, so that takes a bit of the shine off it.
I'll swap...
You would be better placed than most to deal with dead bodies, I presume! When do they introduce you to your first corpse in medical school?
Day 4 of med school, but I'd seen a dead person before. They don't tend to bother me, although I've only seen natural deaths, and can imagine unnatural ones being much more off-putting.
Happily I am done the first draft! So now I can relax a bit, and get some fresh air
Belated birthday wishes, Mycroft! Even while holding back (since I am an Internet stranger), I have to say, never doubt that your happiness will bring joy to John, Greg and your mum. Your happiness is as important a goal as any other.
My sentiments are certainly informed by a lovely Mother's Day meal with my son and his girlfriend. He most certainly follows his own drummer, and it is so good for him that I have to rejoice.
Hope everyone is enjoying spring weather. We are having rain, which is fantastic given our chronic drought.
-fA
why do my feet hurt so much? And can I persuade my husband to rub them for me?
You were using them a lot, perhaps?
no more than normal, I don't think. Good day, anyway.
Yay for a good day!
(We are having a summer day here today--hopefully just a sneak peek.)
How goes the day gentlemen? I hope you have as much sun as we have and that the day is going well :-)
ahhh, good, but long! Havn'e bttn home long. need a drink and to be sent to bed i think!
Morning all.
Hope you got your massage and your early to bed, Greg, and are feeling better today. :)
Exams are progressing well for son and heir at the mo, hope yours are too, Mycroft.
Have a great day everyone. :)
Hope everyone's day is progressing nicely. Good luck to those having exams.
Plunging into three long nights of slam poetry (as devoted audience), a 20th reunion of sorts for the local community. I will be entirely over large groups of people by the time this is done - our local 'scene' draws hundreds, unlike a lot of places - but it's amazing glimpses into other people's minds.
And, of course, there's work. Uninspired at the moment, more coffee and some 35+ year old music will have to work their magic.
-fA
Hope the coffee+music is helping, fA! I'm elbows deep into a second volunteer project for Behind the Book--these kids books are fun to design but a helluva lot of work to lay out. Back I go!
I hope everyone is having a good spring day!
It's been raining ALL DAY nearly and a caterpillar got on my desk at school.
So...some bad and some good, then. Or don't you consider a caterpillar on your desk a good thing?
Apparently...and this is somewhat stretched - if I was born today my name would be Dylan. John would be called Christopher....
(I think this data is American, soo... Anyway, Sherlock made us do it, as, unsurprisingly, his and Mycroft's names don't feature.)
So...The name Dylan is as popular now as Greg was the year you were born--is that how that works? (Is there a link so we can play along?)
Yeah - well, that was a rather unrefined look at the decade I was born in, if we refine it to the year I'd be Samuel. Which is better.
It's just looking up names on here, as far as I can tell. I'm not allowed to do it, Sherlock is in charge of informing us of our 'names'.
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/index.html#ht=1
(John would be Jacob.)
Does Sherlock want to look up my name, or should I do it myself?
Oh, you're probably safe, dinner is just about ready.
Whew! Okay, I'd be Callie. ... I could work with that!
I'd have been Mia. Not bad, but I think I'll stick with what I've got.
Hope those of you getting a weekend enjoy it! I'm saving mine for next weekend ;)
You're working both days? :(
Yup. Both days. Then next weekend having four days.
Sounds like a fair trade-off.
We're weeding and I'm helping because then John says I get to look at all the creatures we find.
What creatures did you find Sherlock? Anything weird and wonderful or was it just worms?
How was work Greg did you find any interesting creatures there? ;-)
I hope you're all getting some relaxation this evening :-)
Well I was given a big bunch of forget-me-nots when I got home, so that was nice!
That's lovely :-) lucky you.
Yeah! Sherlock did make a point of explaining they were weeds, but they're pretty weeds!
Weeds are only flowers growing in the wrong place ;-)
That's exactly what John told him!
internet keeps eating my comment before I can finish and post it. I hope this isn't an unintended consequence of reformatting my hard drive, which has otherwise improved overall running of the "busy box".
Happy belated birthday to Mycroft! I continue to be just as astonished at how fast kids grow up, even after having observed closely as my own did just that. Big Event coming up toward the end of June... :)
Been a bit off the radar here, what with dancing out, work, and a big de-jungling push, trying to dig out as much of the brambles, bittersweet, garlic mustard, etc. as possible before it has a chance to go to seed again.
best to all!
S
Forget-me-nots are very pretty--and romantic. :)
had a great day - breakthrough on an old case, I think! Completely unexpected, too. And home to find out bacon butties had been voted for for dinner and cake had been purchased from 'Mycroft's' deli/patisserie, so all good!
:)
Yay for a good day! I hope everyone else had a good one too...
Maybe Greg The Florist could explain the significance of forget me nots. ;)
We also have been weeding today & planting out our runner beans which are about 5" high now so hopefully they will take & we haven't left it too late. The spuds are looking good too. Have you planted anything different this year or are you going down the chard road again? ;)
Enjoy your evening/day everyone. :)
we will attempt to grow slightly less chard this year... but yeah, we'd got spuds in, but might put more in yet. Reg showed us how to mature them in grass clippings. We've got onions in, and tomatoes in pots, some courgettes and things under cold frames and some french beans, but i think we need more. Hopefully I'll get down there soon!
yay for breakthrough!
gee, we haven't heard anything from Greg the Florist in a while, hmm. :)
S
ha, I'm sure he's busy in his castle :)
Mycroft sent me some links to bikes he's interested in.. i see test rides in our future!
Bike testing sounds fun all round - I'm sure you'll have to just test them yourselves to make sure they're ok, too. ;)
I see it's Eurovision this Saturday - are we up for another fun fest? Our friends from that great European country of Australia will be able to join in this time too. ;)
Have a great day everyone. :)
There's few things I like as much as bike testing - glad he's asked us! He's picked some great bikes to try as well. I will definitely be testing them - can't trust his safety to a bike without having a go on it, checking out the brakes etc.!
Eurovision...I'm not sure if we'll have anyone round, but I will be forcing people here to watch it...
And well done to the Flying Squad for the arrests on the safety deposit box raid, hope they get a result!
And, Mycroft has alerted me to this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyUCR-Sfenc
Eurovision streamed online this year!
bless his soul! He isn't really into the whole thing, but he said maybe you'd all like to join in and watch. I might have to put up a special Eurovision post for you lot to chat on if anyone's up for it ;)
Sounds like a blast! It's this weekend, yes? So even if it's Sunday (rather than Saturday--I'm vague on the dates), I can't watch--Sunday and Monday are Shavuot.
Well, I don't suppose religious Jews are in their target audience (or even among their desired participants).
It's always a Saturday.
I'm not sure anyone high up in Orthodox Judaism has forgiven the show for Dana International yet ;)
*busily looking up Dana International*
You have a point. ;D
Half watched it last night - will probably half watch on Saturday too!
Children willing I'll be watching eurovision, it's one of the highlights of the year as far as me and mine are concerned :-D
Have a good day people.
It is a highlight! I love the variety of acts. And past winners show it isn't just the same old type of songs which win all the time. I reckon we can get Mrs Hudson to come and join us, she's hilarious after a few drinks ;)
One of my life goals as an increasingly Older Person (not there yet, I tell myself ;-) ) is for my interesting younger friends to invite me 'round because I'm hilarious after a few drinks!
Eurovision, bike tests, various minor things around here - some days it's a darn good life, despite the big bad stuff we can't figure out how to fix.
-fA
I don't think I'll watch, at least live, which is most of the fun. Will be spending the day with my grandfather in the hospital. Wanted to say hi and wish you all lots of fun and hope they beat the woman randomly churning butter from last year.
Becca, you're a good granddaughter! I hope your grandparents are doing well, and if not then at least that today is as good a day as it can be. It is even more wonderful to have someone just to be with us when things are not well than when they are.
fA
For a while this morning i was worried the cricket wouldn't last til Saturday!!
Yes, not a very auspicious start. Looks like they're pulling it back a bit now though. I'm sure they're just priming themselves ready to make Saturday extra exciting for you both. Have you got your 4 & 6 cards ready to go. ;) (though I think Mycroft may disown you if you sit next to him waving them) ;)
I'm going to be on my best behaviour for Mycroft...
And now I'm free! Four glorious days... i hope they are glorious ;)
I hope you and Mycroft have an awesome time. :)
(And John and Sherlock, I hope you have an entirely different excellent time!)
My grandfather's having a second emergency surgery right now, for an uncontrolled GI bleed. Any good thoughts would be appreciated.
Sending good vibes his way, Becca, and prayers as well.
He is, at least, out of surgery and in the ICU. Going back over there first thing in the morning. Thanks RR.
Wishing him the very best, Becca.
Best wishes to your grandfather, Becca, and to you and the rest of your family.
Warm thoughts and good wishes for your grandfather and the rest of the family, Becca!
In other news, I'm impressed by the photos of the Irish ex-pats going home to vote in today's referendum. But I can't help but wonder, when did it come about that I'm a little bit shocked when a Western country's election rules seem to compare unfavorably to the U.S.'s? I didn't always have such a dim view of our political process.
Despite the earlier poll results, I'm keeping my fingers crossed a bit anxiously for the results.
(Those last two were from me.) Have a good weekend, all!
-fA
I hope all's well Becca
How's the day been gentlemen? Productive and/or fun I hope :-)
Do you have much planned for half term Sherlock?
The Cricket looks like it might be a long day tomorrow Greg don't you think? not looking good for England unless the morning session is rather more productive than today has been is it?
We have got Mycroft back (early!), Sherlock is undoubtedly planning John an exciting day for tomorrow...
I'm making a picnic for the cricket :)
yay to Mycroft being home :-) I'm betting there isn't much relaxation to be had this holiday though!!
what does one include in a picnic for the cricket? Cucumber sandwiches? ;-)
Huh, I thought I posted earlier, guess my phone ate it. Thanks for all the well wishes. He came through that and another procedure earlier today. They're talking about maybe moving him out of the ICU tomorrow, but given this is his third hospital trip in as many weeks, I'm not holding my breath.
Well best wishes to him, and to you and your family, for dealing with whatever life throws at you all. I hope he's at least comfortable.
AnonyBob - we've got olives, meat, some pasta salad and other bits to snack on.
Sounds like you're all set, Greg. Don't forget to take sun cream too being just sat out in it all day. Last time we went I ended up with a sunburnt nose and arms even though it wasn't a particularly blue sky. Hope you and Mycroft have a great day and that they put on a good show for you.
Hope you've got a fun day planned with John, Sherlock. I'm sure whatever it is it'll be just as good if not better than sitting around at the cricket.
See everyone tomorrow night for a bit of Eurovision fun. :)
All the best to your family, Becca. Hope your Grandfather is soon on the mend.
Rain has stopped play.. Im soggy.
Still hanging in at the match?
-fA
England just bowled NZ out! (from nowhere Mycroft produced a brolly and kept us fairly dry earlier. And we had champagne ;)) but didn't get a zebra...
"from nowhere?" Mycroft is either magic or the excitement is interfering with your DI skill set!
(Yay England! Now may they score.)
- fA
Aaand the Irish overtake the U.S. in human decency that transcends religious affiliation!
I'm so old that at one time I never thought I'd ever see a headline in the US from Ireland that wasn't about a visiting politician, a terrorist bombing or grieving parents.
- fA
I see Graham is fine form already. If anybody watching Eurovision via streaming has a choice of commentary then definitely choose Graham Norton. :)
We got home just in time to chuck some pizza dough together and turn eurovision on!
I can't imagine eurovision with out graham Norton, it just wouldn't be the same :-D
I did worry when he first took over because I didn't think you could beat Terry, but he's picked up the mantle with ease.
Not sure on Slovenia there. I'm sure your violin playing is far superior to that and you wouldn't need flashing lights, Sherlock. ;)
Faux-naked drummers! Really! ;)
Well...he at least has a violin, which beats her, really...
I've got a quick post up, so we don't run out over here (or annoy anyone not interested by Eurovision!!)
yes, FA, wonderful to see Ireland Do The Right Thing. I do feel a bit odd about people voting on basic human rights, but since it was a decisive YES, I can breathe a sigh of relief. It's also nice to see that religion doesn't have to equal bigotry. (really wish people would stop hiding their bigotry behind "religion")
S
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