Today was spent in the outdoors for a change!

Here's part one of this series if you want to start from the beginning: https://www.publish0x.com/crypto-musings-consumer-impacts/my-staycation-day-1-xdgrmkz

The earliest birthdays in recorded history had nothing to do with people. In fact, they were associated with the gods people worshiped. The Egyptians are assumed to have been the first reference, recognizing the date and day when a Pharaoh became a god and deity, transitioning from a previous human. The Greeks borrowed the concept from the Egyptians, and they associated the day a person was born with their particular bond with a Greek god on that given day. The Greeks also added something else to the mix, cakes with candles! It wasn't until the Romans arrived, however, birthdays started to focus on the person in particular versus spiritual beings. Leave it to the Latin ego.

Roman Fresco from Pompeii,Wikipedia.

However, when Christianity took hold in later Rome, Roman pagan practices were discouraged, including the birthday celebration. So, for about four centuries Christians poo-poo'd birthday ideas until someone got around to thinking about the baby Jesus and Christmas being his birthday. That shifted the narrative, no pun intended, and birthdays became acceptable again.

Birthday Cakes, Wikipedia.

However, the Germans refined the birthday celebration in the 1700s, and the practice of a candle for every year of life came into practice. Yet again, one of the most mundane practices people have today dates back to some of the most ancient pagan ceremonies in history

Here was today's interesting staycation events:

• Holy crap! Had to wake up at 6:30am this morning to make an 8am appointment for the kids. My eyes are still burning from the experience after going to sleep at 1am the previous night.
• Breakfast was a thermos full of coffee, black, and two sausage breakfast burritos.
• Went for a horse ride for my younger child's birthday. I looked like a misplaced Lord of the Rings dwarf cast member uncomfortably placed on a horse when he should be walking. Now I have no feeling in my backside for the rest of the week. The horse laughed at me all the way back to the ranch.
• I learned photography and horses don't mix. My camera bounced so much while trotting on the horse I smacked me in the head. A Canon D10 is not a lightweight object to connect with your cranium without warning.
• Lunch was ostensibly darn good. Mondo steak salad with thin fried onions on top. Okay, not feeling so bad now.
• Spent four hours once I was back at home play Minecraft to forget the world and cool down from the heat on the horseride. Did you know it takes four hours of A/C to cool down for every hour in extreme heat?
• Now I'm closing the evening down watching a very spooky space sci-fi show, Nightflyers on Netflix (again), and working on some project revisions for clients.

It's been a long day, but a simple one. My kid is a few short years from adulthood, and it felt like just yesterday when she was just born. Time goes way too damn fast.