Birthdays are often the time to take stock of ones lot. And I like to look back on my birthday on the pluses and minuses of the last twelve months - and compile a little life balance sheet just to see whether I’m still making progress or not. So here’s a quick catch up on everything since August of 2007.

1. Lost: My flat in England. I came off the property ladder, and went back to the world of renting. Whereas the majority of my peers are well on their way to paying off their mortgage and I feel like I have been left behind.
2. Gained: The most healthy bank balance I’ve ever had in my life! [See '1'] - and it’s even better when I convert the pounds to dollars. Beers on me today then.
3. Lost: A wife. No, no, I didn’t misplace her. Instead she said “I’m ending it”, I cried and literally begged her not to, but she wasn’t having it.
4. Gained: Transport. Thus making me truly American - I can now drive about Charleston. It’s not without its tribulations though.
5. Gained: Too many friends at this place. It feels wonderful.
6. Gained: Confidence. Again, due to [5]. The blog post that I could write to explain the intricacies of my experiences since ‘doing’ improv would go on for so long, that you would seriously get bored as I attempted to explain just how much this means to me right now - and even then it would probably only really be coherent to me. Suffice to say it’s been more fun than I could ever have possibly envisaged when I first started doing it. And I love it.
7. Lost: A steady job, because I quit it. Hang on - fuck that - that’s a gain because I am now finally in a position to further my career and move in a positive direction, rather than being held back by a bunch of numpties.
8. Gained: Travel experiences. And more planned - there’s a lot the US of A out there that I ain’t seen yet!
9. Gained: Blond hair! Ok, blond-ish. Yes - I coloured my hair this week again, would you like a picture? And better yet, there are no readily visible grey ones from a distance either. (Although if you get in close up to me, you might me able to see one or two strands…) Not bad for a thirty-six year old.

I can’t think of a tenth thing - I couldn’t last year either - Well nothing that seems that important anyway. But so far my 37th year alive is shaping up to be one of the best yet, and I am thoroughly looking forward to the next twelve months. And I couldn’t say that last year.

Happy Birthday to me.

Previous years: [ Winning and Losing 2007 ] [Winning and Losing 2006 ] [ Birthday Boy 2005 ] [ Idea stolen from here ]

(All times local)

4.54pm - At airport. I don’t see any. Most disappointing. Total = 0

6.14pm - Taxi to hotel. Pass two! Must go back to take photos. Total = 2

7.23pm - Am at the Space Needle. The coffee bar at the top is the ‘Sky Cafe’ and is NOT serving Starbucks coffee. Again, more disappointment. Total = 2

7.54pm - Found one! Exiting the Seattle Monorail and walking down Pine Street towards the market. Total = 3

8.01pm - Woooah! Check it out … it’s the mecca of all Starbucks. It’s the original store by the market at Pike Place with the original wooden counters. And interesting, they only do coffee, and no food items. There is a little ‘history’ corner of the company with photos and literature, and I take two minutes read the book on the counter about the history of their expansion over the years. I try to recall the first time I had a Starby’s in England, I think it was in 2001.

8.19pm - I go and sit in Victor Steinbrueck park drinking my latte and watching the sunset. A sign advertising the lunchtime music festival taking place all this month is sponsored by Starbucks.

8.32pm - It’s getting dark now, and all the SBUXS I find now are closed. I find four in quick succession, within 250 metres and 60 seconds walk of each other - all centered around Union Street and 2nd Avenue area. Total = 8

8.43pm - There are a lot of homeless people begging on the streets of Seattle. I’ve just passed one that’s using an empty Starbucks cup to ask for change.

8.57pm - I think I’ve found one more up on 5th avenue, before realising that it’s one of the ones that I saw from the taxi earlier on the way in. But then, across the street from it around the corner and within direct line of sight I see one that I definitely did not see earlier! Taking my total to 9 for the night. At which point I call it a day.

Seattle has bendy buses like London. And trams like Amsterdam. The airport also smells of cinnamon which doesn’t remind me of any other city that I’ve been to before.

More Starbucks based reading (For the pure JavaHeads)

• Maximum Starbucks Density - There are 43 in a 5 mile radius in New York
• How many Starbucks is too many? Discuss!
• Starbucks inside of Starbucks - Would they go that far?
• Say NO to Starbucks - A Minnesota town resists
• The End of The Universe Starbucks style

So with apologies for the rough feel of the cut, here’s a little four minute adventure of my trip onto the Mendenhall Glacier today. Flirting with the tour guide is not obligatory, but I couldn’t help myself. It was though, absolutely stunning … I hope it comes across.

The joke at the end the tour guide makes is in reference to a moraine. Don’t worry, I didn’t know what one was either until I’d looked it up.

Photo taken from a helicopter, shortly before we landed on it. Video to follow.

Some of my nicest weather days in Charleston has been where it’s rained a little - not a massive thunderstorm, but a pleasant warm rain that cools the air down, removes the humidity and allows you to breath again without this feeling that a sackful of pollen was clogging up your lungs somewhere.

Stepping out of my cheap (but clean, and functional) motel this morning, a bizarre smell hits my nose. It’s air - clean air! Clean, crisp, fresh and rainy air that is wonderful to consume. So I stop, happy to get wet for a moment and breath it all in. Sunshine is seriously overrated sometimes, y’know?

I head downtown. I’m having a lazy day of just checking out the local facilities and don’t feel like doing any 10 mile treks today. I’ve even scaled back on my geocache hunt. I just want to see what it would be like to be an arriving tourist on a cruise ship in town.

Juneau thrives on its tourists. Between April and October, the cruise ships all stop off here dumping off several hundred people sometimes just for a few hours, sometimes overnight, and the local businesses thrive because of it. There are three ocean liners docked today - but what the hell do they do during the winter months when nobody stops by?

The small 31,000 population must get a little claustrophobic. Juneau is road-locked. You can only get here by sea or air. I’ve already driven as far west as you can go and as far east as you can go. It took about ninety minutes from one end to another.

People apparently drop out of school early here. People want to get out and escape to the rest of the world. The city built a new high school recently, except they’ve now got no students to fill it with.

Commercialisation has crept in - slowly. Walmart only arrived here a year ago. The two McDonald’s are a recent addition too. Unlike other liberal minded people, there was apparently a sense of relief to get a McDonalds because it made them feel ‘more like’ the rest of the USA, and on opening day there was a queue of people to get in. Woah! That sounds more like the USSR then the USS of A.

I pop into McD’s to use a bit of of their Wi-Fi (trouble with the ‘net connection in my hotel). Lots of SUV’s pull up, choking gas at almost five bucks a gallon (AK has the highest gas prices in the land, along with Hawaii), and bearded blokes with hats and raincoats come in and order two Big Macs at a time.

A few minutes later, four big-bearded-fishermen types across the table from me start to pray. They’re saying Grace - in a McDonalds. It’s a little surreal.

I step back outside into the moist cool fresh air, and head off for the historic downtown district. I pass plenty of gift shops. A T-Shirt in a window catches my eye - “A quaint little drinking town with a fishing problem”. If you’re not employed in local government matters here, you either work in a restaurant or you’re a fisherman.

I loop round the whole downtown - it doesn’t take long, and find myself back where the boats come in. There are seaplanes here too - taking off and landing on a fairly regular basis. And the low cloud & mist rolls in making for a spectacular backdrop.

This is a nice - but different - kinda town.

Monday - Resign from job, by giving two weeks notice. Tuesday - Walk out of job after being told I can leave immediately. Wednesday - Have a hard day sunning myself for too many hours at the beach. Thursday - Travel for 19 hours via Philadelphia and Seattle to get to the capital of the 49th state of America. It’s been a busy week.

The view out of my cheap motel window this morning almost looks like this:

I say almost, because what I can actually see is a parking lot and the grocery store across the street … but if I walk 30 seconds down the road, then THAT IS what I can see. It’s called the Mendenhall Glacier, and is rather awesome. I think I’m going to like it here.

10 facts about Juneau/Alaska:

• There are 260 miles of hiking trails, but only 40 miles of road in Juneau
• Alaska as a whole has one mile of road for every 42 square miles of land, compared to 1:1 for the rest of the USA
• Juneau is actually based in the Tongass National Forest, classified as a temperate rainforest, the largest in North America
• There are Sitka spruce trees everywhere
• The Tlingit people are the native inhabitants of the land
• Juneau exploded in growth in the 1870’s when gold was discovered here, and a rush started
• Juneau only became the capital of the state in 1959
• There are according to the latest figures just 31,452 residents here
• The government employs over half of those
• I’m here for a weeks vacation. To take in the views, take hundreds of photos, mountain bike around a lot, and go geocache crazy!

And to make myself feel not-so-old as I’m going to be, I thought I’d get recorded fact of people stating the thing that they always seem to say … “Oh but you only look X years old!”, where X is a usually at least a couple, but sometimes many years less than I actually am - which is nice.

So when put on the spot - and with a video camera pointed at their face - how old would people say I looked or am going to be on my birthday next month?

Answer at the end of the video …