Yes, today is once again my birthday. And while I'd prefer to overlook this momentous occasion, I'm excited for this year's birthday because I'm all threes. I'm turning 33 on the 3rd of the month, giving me three threes in my birthday.

I'd like to explain the cosmic, fortuitous, mystic, and altogether exciting implications this numerical combination holds, but I will leave that to the great poets of Schoolhouse Rock:

I must mention that I have always loved De La Soul's interpretation of this tune, from their still-fantastic album of *real* hip-hop: 3 Feet High and Rising from 1989.

I'm a big fan of odd numbers. I always like to have odd numbers in my address or phone number whenever possible, and any visual artist will tell you that odd numbers always make any group look more interesting. The fact that today I have an odd number of odd numbers in my birthday, and that all of those odd numbers are the same odd number must really mean something.

Three is the first odd prime number and the first lucky prime number. If you're a Pythagorean, (and really who isn't these days?) you consider three to be the most noble of digits. Both protons and neutrons consist of three quarks each, and the third element of the periodic table is Lithium - read into that whatever you will.

Plato split the soul into three parts, while Hegel created a whole dialectic of three. There are Three Jewels in Buddhism, Three Pure Ones in Taoism, Three Patriarchs in Judaism, and of course there's the Holy Trinity. Karl Marx wrote three "isms", and so did President Wilson. Then there's the three-monkey philosophy which I try to follow every day.

Mark Twain talked about three lies: "Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics", while our legal system is anchored by three truths: "The Truth, The Whole Truth, Nothing But the Truth".

In Chinese culture, the word for "three" is considered lucky because it sounds like the word "alive" in Cantonese. People do say that bad luck comes in threes or that "things happen in threes", but I think all of that's coincidence, and everyone knows that the third time's the charm. 

There are Three Bears, Three Little Pigs, Three Blind Mice, Three Amigos, Three Wishes, Three Musketeers, and three rings in the Lord of the Rings. I've also always been partial the "hat trick" in hockey, when someone scores three times in one game.

So anyways, it's a magic number all over and I'm pretty happy about that. I'm hoping the universe brings more magic my way this coming year, with lots of hat tricks, three wishes, and good things happening in threes!