The future of birthday greetings is now.

I got my college degree one year ago today.

This is it?

I finally joined the elite ranks of “Everyone Else” on Wednesday when I became the proud owner of a 16GB 3G iPhone. My amazing parents were gracious enough to buy it for me for my upcoming 25th birthday.

I took an early lunch to try to beat the crowds - and good thing too. When I walked up, there were only 3 people in front of me. When I left just shy of an hour later, there were several dozen people in line. The fact that Apple has made a product that is so coveted that people are still scrambling to wait in line for the opportunity to emphatically throw $300 at the feet of Steve Jobs and another $100 a month to AT&T for the next stage of life has to be making several Apple executives sleep very, very soundly these days.

All that aside, the whole purchasing experience was a conflicting, humbling one. Apple has long been seen as the trendy choice for young 20-somethings with hip jobs like web or graphic design, who spend their afternoons at Starbucks on their Macs, listening to Coldplay and Dave Matthews Band on their iPods. Oh, by the way, that’s me.

As I walked into the Apple store that fateful Wednesday morning, it hit me even more how much I had whored myself out to the trends. There I was in my faded jeans, indie band t-shirt and green canvas conductor hat, messenger bag comfortably slung over my shoulder, walking into the Apple store to buy an iPhone. Yep. I was that guy. And I hadn’t even planned on going to the Apple store that day; I’d just woken up and dressed like any other day.

Damn it, I really am that guy.

Ahh, who’m I kidding? I love being that guy. Like they say, if the shoe fits… they’re good shoes? you should buy them? they were made for a foot very similar to yours? Come to think of it, how does that saying even end? Has anyone even ever finished that sentence? I’m going to go with “If the shoe fits, I hope its match is nearby, or else you’ll be walking with a slight limp.”

Alright, this has just turned into one of my rambling, incoherent posts. Time to wrap it up. I’m the trendy, young, Apple-loving, web-designing guy that you’re parents warned you about, and I’m fine with that. It’s who I am. Apple’s products are incredible. So what? I like the way these jeans fit me, and that hat is super-comfy and saves me the trouble of having to do anything with my hair. Boo ya. The iPhone is possibly the most well-conceived, sleek and powerful consumer electronic product on the market today. And I’ve got one. Is it my fault if my tastes are shared by the majority of a particular demographic?

That demographic being “everyone else.”

Twitter rocks my world.  I’ve been actively using it for 6ish months now, and it has quite literally changed the way I communicate with my core group of friends.  From random status updates to pithy remarks to thinly-veiled insults, it’s a constant battle of one-uppery.  At it’s peak activity, it’s not too far removed from 7 or 8 people sitting around a table, all actively taking part in three different conversations at the same time.  It’s madness, and it’s positively glorious.

As much as I love it, my phone is getting one heckuva work out.  Of the 40 or so people that I follow on Twitter, I get mobile updates for about ten of them.  There are nights where I will receive upwards of 30 or 40 text messages over the course of a couple of hours, and send another dozen.  It’s only slightly less hectic than it sounds and infinitely more entertaining than it really has any right to be.

Fortunately, I’m on a phone plan that gives me 1,500 text messages a month. Unfortunately, even that exorbitant amount wasn’t enough for this past billing cycle.

@twitterbuddies You owe me 10 bucks.

I’ve been eating eggs a lot lately. I hard boil a batch of a dozen or two, and munch on them over the course of a week. And without fail, the line from Beauty & the Beast gets stuck in my head:

When I was a lad I ate four dozen eggs
Every morning to help me get large
And now that I’m grown I eat five dozen eggs
So I’m roughly the size of a barge

Dude, Gaston’s a freaking beast, man.

This happens every now and then. Inexplicably and without warning, I am suddenly overcome with motivation and a desire to better myself in one way or another.

This particular instance of it is regarding getting in better shape. It hit sometime last week for reasons unknown. Since I’ve been terribly apathetic about that whole aspect of life for several months now, I’m embracing it whole-heartedly.

These kinds of moods typically leave me as quickly as they came. I fully expect to wake up any day now and suddenly not care any more. “Eh… I’ll run tomorrow.” “Water’s so bland; I want a soda!” “I haven’t eaten a bowl of Crisco in FOREVER!”

All that to say, I’m trying to make the most of it while I can. Running and biking frequently; eating well; drinking lots of water. It’s going well so far; I’m actually really enjoying it.

And using lots of semicolons.