Moving closer to four decades

This year I'm going to be 40 years old ... and I have to say it's not really a big deal to me ... sorta.

It's not a big deal in the sense of being 40 means I'm old, because I'm not. Honestly, I had a much more difficult time when I turned 29 knowing that I was going to be 30 the next year.

The idea of turning 40 just doesn't bother me. As a smart-ass friend of mine (who's birthday is Dec. 22, exactly 5 months to the day after mine and will also be 40 this year) likes to remind me, I'll be 40 before him. But, as I like to tell him, I may be 40 before him, but he'll always look older than me (he went salt-and-pepper looooong before I started).

But News Year's Day got me to thinking about this whole turning 40 thing and a party I went to last night put it in even more perspective.

I realized last night that I have three basic groups of friends: ones that are older than me, ones around my age, and another that are younger.

My wife, Kelley, is five years my senior so when we hang out with her friends that she's known since high school, I'm always the youngest in the crowd because Kell is one of the youngest in this group. Last night age came up and I said I was turning 40 this year and some were mockingly aghast saying they had seen 40 a long time ago. It's funny because until the issue is brought up and I realize that some of these people are almost 10 years older than me, age isn't a big deal. I guess it still isn't ... until some of them like to joke that I'm still a "youngster."

Then there's the group of friends who are younger ... much younger in some cases. Kell has become friendly with some of her co-workers at school and it's been great getting to know and hanging out with them. To put the age difference in perspective, Kell graduated high school in 1982 and one of her co-workers was born that year. We were sitting around recently and heard Van Halen's "Jump" on the radio and I said I could remember exactly where I was when I bought that album on vinyl in 1983. One of our friend's girlfriend's looked at me and said, "Wow, I wasn't even born yet." Yeah, I felt a little old then.

But, much like the "older" group, age really isn't a big deal and it's not something we really think about ... until we start teasing Kell that she really is the oldest in this circle. Thankfully, she couldn't care less (still, it's fun to remind her).

Finally, the third group are people around my age (within two or three years). Some of them are lamenting pushing towards 40 until they realize that I'm going to get there first, then they don't seem to feel so bad. But some in that group are far more grayer than I am or have less hair than I do, so I have that going for me, which is nice ... LOL.

Anyway, as I think about 40, it feels like I'm turning more into an adult. My 20s were spent largely trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted to do professionally. As I moved through my 30s, I got married, bought a house and became a dad, things that make you grow up and mature very quickly.

So I'm looking at 40 and it feels like the beginning of another chapter. I think this is going to be the part of my life where I really establish who I am as a person, husband and father. My life hasn't been just about me since Kell and I got married in 2000 and it became even less so when Joey was born in 2004. By the time I'm 50, Joey will be a teenager(!) and Kell and I will celebrate our 19th wedding anniversary.

Yup, should be a fun decade.

A new frontier ... sorta

President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration is a little less than a week away and his official presidential portrait has been released.

The kinda sorta cool thing here (I think, anyway) is that it's the first presidential portrait to be taken with a digital camera.