Birthday mornings.

Why do my birthday mornings never start out with me waking up in the arms of two or more nubile beauties in a post-coital haze?

There's something a little depressing about waking up on your birthday alone. Even more so the anticipation of it; knowing, as you're riding the train back home at midnight, that nothing awaits you but cold sheets and an empty bed.

Sure it might just be a scheduling snafu - people get busy, people have other commitments. They'll be with you later in the day, in the Russian baths in the afternoon, or at your poker party that evening.

But that first moment when you wake up and the first thought in your mind is instant self-reflection and assessment of the state of your life. And in that summing up of your life, to have a cypher in the column where there should be a warm body is, just a little bit, sad. That twinge in the back of your throat sadness. It passes as consciousness fully inhabits you, as your limbs stretch away it recedes in the distance, but still... it's there.

And you've missed another chance at a perfect Birthday morning.

Such is life.