Today is my 13th birthday and we had a party at school in writing class and my Mom made me a cake with aliens on it. I also got some nice presents and some balloons that were in my room when I came home from school. My favorite present was a telescope from my parents that I can't wait to try out. Gretchen gave me a t-shirt with Alf on it (she knows that I like Alf) and Grandpa gave me an old hat that he had to "wrangle away" from the Hopalong Cassidy museum in Wichita. It was supposed to eventually go in the new Jem Bigsky and singing cowboy museum in Grandpas hometown, but he decided that to honor my interest in his history that I should have it. "You are interested in history for the right reason and not just for money", Grandpa said, "so you should have it". The hat is one that he wore in three different movies making it his favorite and he considered it his lucky hat. The first time he wore it was when he went to eat at a diner in Culver city and that is where he met Grandma. She was a waitress there and she accidentally spilled coffee on the seat right next to the hat and some of the coffee got on the bottom of the back brim. The stain was too small "for any movie director to notice", but it was big enough that he would see it and he would be reminded of Grandma. He had mistakenly given it to the museum in Wichita and didn't have the nerve to ask for it back, but when the new museum in Missouri wanted some of Grandpas things that Grandpa thought it was a good time to ask for it back. It doesn't really fit me, but I will hang it on my wall above my computer. I guess it was a pretty good birthday and Cousin Bruce said that now that I am an official teenager that I can go see PG-13 movies and swear at my friends. I said that sounds like a pretty damn good idea and tomorrow after school Tom and I are going to see Harry Potter without our parents. Gretchen is only 12 so she can't go, but I've promised to take her to see Wallace and Gromit on Saturday. By the way, I hope because 13 is an unlucky number that I don't have an unlucky year. People have told me that it is often the worst year of your life because everything changes very fast inside your body and nothing seems the same from day to day. I wasn't to happy to hear this, but I guess that if 13 is unlucky than I just have to start telling people my age in months, so today I turned 156 months old. Now, I can't wait until I turn 192 so that I can drive.