Poor Tim is so sick. This morning the bed was shaking so hard from his shivering I dreamt I was on a magic fingers motel bed. "You cold? Here, snuggle up," I said, moving over to spoon and share body heat, and nearly scalded myself on his skin. He protested, but I made him take his temperature (102.5!!), stay home sick, and call the doctor.

His temp. is down to 100.9 now, but I still worry. My poor bop.

My temp. is normal (under 98), but my throat is sore and I feel achey. I'm desperate to not get sick, though, especially since they took away sick time and take it out of our vacation time now. Bleah.

---

Good weekend! I wrote! I mean, I wrote successfully, stuff I'm happy with, stuff that might not even need serious lifting before I clean it up and send it out in the world! This is an amazing feeling -- writing like this begets more writing, because I *know* I can do it, I can distinctly recall doing it (just yesterday!), so I can feel how possible it is to do it again. It's incredible, incredible. Yesterday I wrote about 3k, fixing a story that had been languishing, untyped in, in a notebook for some time. The working (possibly final?) title for that is "Little M@tch Girl".

Today, on the train in to the City, I worked on a pirate story, which I hope to have done in time to submit to a pirate anthology. We'll see. I can feel how this is an exploratory draft, and I'm already rethinking my structure, even though I've only got a few pages down. I'm having trouble letting go of the need to have "scenes", and just tell the story -- well, the trouble is in figuring out how much of each I need and when. I feel like I'm learning something with this story, possibly, which is great, except that might mean it'll take me longer to figure out than the month I have. Ah well. It's a seriously weird pirate story, anyway... maybe I'll be able to sell it elsewhere even in the glut of pirate stories that will inevitably clog slush piles throughout the genre afterwards...

---

I've been good about working out regularly, though today I skipped (I forgot my gym clothes at home and felt crappy by the end of the day anyway). I'm outpacing even my sister when walking around town, but I'm not really losing any weight. It's time to start on the eating habits again, I think. Sigh. I hate writing down everything I eat, but I've yet to find a better way of making myself accountable for what I put in my mouth. Luckily the leftover birthday cake that we had for me on Friday at work mysteriously disappeared over the weekend. I mean, bummer, but probably for the best.

Sigh.

Oh! My birthday! It was grand! Holly took me out to Bar Tartine, one of the hippest new spots in the Mission (or so I'm told), where we had incredibly good food and a bottle of wine between the two of us. Bekah (my co-worker and friend) and her girlfriend Liz came towards the end and got the table next to us, so I had the three of them singing happy birthday when they brought out my plum tart with a candle in it. Very fun.

We walked to the Castro to the Mint, where we sang along to karaoke and nearly botched "Love Shack", the one song we sang (Holly didn't tell me she didn't know the male part, so we ended up swapping halfway through and pulled it out). My co-worker Evan, who was leaving to move to Philly in two days, was drunk off his ass and very funny. He really gets into karaoke, and we stayed so late as to nearly miss the last BART train back to the East Bay just to hear him sing some Prince.

The walk from Castro to Civic Center at 11:30ish at night isn't as scary as I thought it would be, though we were moving pretty fast (this is where I realized I outpaced Holly in city walking, whoo!). We got into the station and down to the platform 3 minutes before the last train to the East Bay pulled in. Whew! If we had missed it, that would have been a $30+ cab ride home.

Anyway, it was a really good birthday week this year. Thanks to everyone for the happy birthday wishes!