Misty gets the best auntie birthday present of all: a nephew born on her birthday … the newest bald member of the Granade family.(*ducks*)

Congratulations to Andrew and Joy, whose first child Samuel Nathan was born today. We're still trying to figure out how someone as small as Joy managed to gestate an eight-pound child without, uh, exploding. (Does the C-section count?)

Of course, it turns out that little Sam scored a 9/10 on his Apgars. Nothing like starting a pattern of high achievement from the start.

I was supposed to be asleep. Every now and then, for some reason, even with the best of modern pharmaceuticals, my body just gets determined to stay awake. Therefore, it's well past three in the morning and here I am, glorying in the quietness of my new keyboard in the partially-cleaned computer room.See, I'm plotting. That never bodes well.

Every now and then, I get a random IM'er whose attempts at … conversation … are so random that I just can't come up with anything funnier to say than what s/he said to me in the first place.Hey, why are you laughing? I'm serious here!

Tonight's winner is compiled over three days of conversations. I ignored him the first two times but the third time, I just couldn't resist testing the waters to see if this was a bot. I think it was. Or a 2 Live Crew song gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Read on:

[01:58] dr_khaled_elswaf2005: this is your picture

Texas gets all the glory, but it looks like the people in my home state are definitely pulling their weight [CNN article].

I've known what the title of this entry would be for two months; even though I never could quite get around to putting fingers to keyboard to bring it into being. The word "laden" whispered itself to me as fingers touched blossom, whispered to me in that insistent voice that said, no matter how long it took, the chronicle of this moment was one that would not stay wholly in my mind.

It was my seventh wedding anniversary, but the story starts several days earlier, in an airport standing next to a man who, unbeknownst to me, had a plan.

* * * * *

I hugged Jake at the airport, marveling at his ability to take a cross-country flight and come out looking just as neat and calm as he must've looked upon boarding the plane. Through a screwup, I hadn't met him on his way to baggage claim as I'd originally intended; he was already at baggage claim by the time I found him.

There is light. There is the possibility of my finishing up my dragon*con 2005 duties by October 1, a possibility fraught with both excitement and trepidation.I have been playing Barenaked Ladies almost incessantly all day.

This is the part of the year that I refer to as "the slog." I have stories to tell about the past few months, but I am so wrapped up in the possibility of finally grinding through the remainder of my work that I have trouble focusing on anything but the finish line. Never mind that I really won't know what to do with myself when I get there.