All our lives Caroline and I have been rabid bibliophiles. When I was little I read through all the books that had been bought for me and was so fervent about needing something else to sate my hunger for literature my mom caved and let me devour her collection of novels – a decision that led to 1st grade book reports on titles such as Cujo and Eaters Of The Dead accompanied by slightly concerned teachers.

I am the kind of person who would have to be dragged from my house if it caught fire while I happened to be reading. My tendency to bury my nose in books while walking has lead to countless Mr. Magoo style near escapes, some of them humorous others genuinely coming close to finishing my life before I could finish the book.

Understandably as a result of our combined bibliophilia we have amassed a fairly large collection of books.

Every year Caroline and I have an annual review. (Well, actually twice a year but we’ll get to that in a second.) First, if you don’t know what an annual review is, then please go read ‘How to Conduct your Own Annual Review’ by Chris over at The Art of Non-Conformity. Honestly, even if you’re familiar with annual reviews, go read the article again first – it’s one of the most useful posts on Chris’s site and considering the quality of the rest of his stuff that’s high praise. Really, go read it. I’ll wait.

All done? Cool.

So where do we come back in? Well, Caroline and I do things a little bit differently. Due to all the holidays, and a small horde of binding familial obligations encircling the New Year, I’ve found it’s just not practical to conduct our big annual reviews at the end of the year.

Before reading, please note that this isn’t so much of an instructional or informational post like most on here so much as it is a… philosophical one. The intent here isn’t to teach you anything new. Rather, as its name suggests, this post is a memento – a reminder. Specifically, a reminder of our mortality; something that I think is far too easily forgotten nowadays. So if you’re looking for something more informational or just think it’s a downer to be reminded of how fragile your life is, we have lots of other good articles to read. Otherwise, enjoy.

Today is my birthday. On this day 24 years ago, I drew my very first breaths. On this very same day in 1945, 42 years before I got here, 100,000 people in Hiroshima, Japan breathed their last.

It’s fairly safe to say that none of the people who died that day knew what was coming. These were people who were going about their normal day, not worrying about whether they were going to see tomorrow or not. There were children with homework to worry about, people planning vacations, people with dates that evening – likely even people celebrating their birthdays, like I do today.

For all of these people the thought that their last few moments of existence would take place that same day probably never crossed their minds. Honestly, they probably didn’t expect their lives to end for years. They were going about their days just like any other when, quite literally in a flash, they were gone.

We’ve officially made the decision to move all of our comments over to Disqus both to mitigate some of the spam we get and to make discussions within the comments a little easier to manage.

You’ll already notice the comment section at the end of each post has changed. For the time being, we’re not going to make anyone sign up to comment. However, if the spam continues to get out of hand, we will consider requiring commenters to sign up first.

It’s really easy to do, and I like Disqus enough to encourage signing up anyway, which you can either do on their signup page or using the little Disqus button above the comments on our site.

Current comments are being migrated over, so if it looks like all of your comments have disappeared don’t worry – they’ll all be back soon.

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