I've discovered that a lot of the really nasty events in life start out with my saying, "But I thought I was fine!"

I've gotten sugar-crashy in a lot of different places, but through usage of Gatorade and Zone Bars I've always managed to avoid entirely misplacing my blood sugar while exercising. A good thing, since I seem to exercise a lot these days, and I suspected I'd have a spectacular time of it if I managed to have such a beastie in one of my Places Of Workout.

Well, see, I thought I was fine!

I always get kinda thinky on this day. Don't mind me; it'll pass. It was just a day picked by my mother's obstetrician, but somewhere along the way, along the years, it became 'my' day.(Hey, I was breech, and my mother was tiny. They took no chances…and you in the back, the one that just piped up and said "Even from birth you were determined to show your ass!" -- I heard that, you little prankster. No cookies for you!)

You are cleaning right now, sorting clothes into 'keep' and 'donate' piles, with the end hope of having a usable closet again. I am in the computer room, new music playing, cooling down from my second workout of the day and trying to give you the room you need to finish your task in the space of a day.

A day, this day, your thirtieth birthday.

On the day I married you, I stood there, twenty-one, wondering what in the world we'd manage to do with our lives if we walked in the same direction.

It's been so long since the discovery of the synchronicity of our birthdays that the magic of it is a little lost on us now: yours the sixteenth, your sister Lori's the eighteenth, mine the twentieth. Instead, over the years, October has just become 'our month'; a birthday week shared by us and, later, unwittingly, by two cats who were born five years ago, sometime between your birthday and mine.

For the first week after I got my hair cut, back in August, I tied it back in a bandanna and tried not to acknowledge that I'd gotten it cut. It was, you see, not what I'd asked for.

I told the woman who cut my hair - specifically! - that I wanted a chin-length bob, and that she must take into account the fact that my hair was wavy. Pulling and combing my hair straight down and cutting it at chin-length in that situation meant that it would curl and fluff up well past my chin.

Errata in the truest sense of the word:

Courtesy of Brian, "Which Nigerian Spammer Are You?"

You are Princess Agbani. You are a student at the University of Nigeria, Lagos. You got my name through the chember of comerse. You have $21,350,000 to share, which your father, the king, left you. You have trouble spelling.

Yesterday, I faced the water for the first time in a month.

I hadn't planned on being gone this long, but sometimes life conspires with the gods, and we short, somewhat red-headed mortals have no choice but to acquiesce.

There was the preparation for dragon*con, then there was the [food poisoning | stomach flu], then the "con crud" that Jeff and I passed back and forth to each other, then the drives to/from Atlanta that bookended my trip to Colorado, and suddenly it was … October?

It stopped me short when I realized it - October, already? When did that happen?

I had been out of the gym for a month, and it was time to get back in there. I'm not done, not by a long shot, even though the photos tell me I look better now than I have in years. Still, I kept putting off renewing my swim membership, thinking that I'd just wait 'one more day' and then I'd get around to it, really…