We went to Heather's monthly appointment on Friday, and I got to hear the baby's heartbeat for the first time! Also its tiny little percussive kicks! It's funny... I've been thinking of the baby mostly in terms of things I have to do -- financial stability to attain, housework to do, space to clear, etc. -- but hearing the heartbeat made it much more about the baby, somehow; a sudden realization that this is a tiny person we're talking about, soon to join our life.

Heather and I have been listening to Chloe Day for the past couple of days. She has a lovely voice. We especially like her song "Spoon."

Yesterday was... a little bit chaotic. Heather -- because she is organized and writes things down while I just pile important mail in an untidy heap beside my computer -- noticed that our car registration renewal was due... yesterday. No problem. You can renew online! So I dug up the envelope, which I hadn't actually, y'know, really looked inside before, and discovered that our car had to be taken in for a smog check before it could be renewed. Groan. So I poked at the internet, and wonders were revealed: the gas station down by the farmer's market does smog tests. I called 'em, and they weren't busy, and said to bring the car on down.

This actually worked out nicely. Heather got con crud at WisCon and has been feeling under the weather all week, so the chance of us doing our usual walk down to the lake was a bit slim; there's nothing sadder than a pregnant woman coughing on the side of the road! If we had to take the car anyway, though... Normally I have a firm rule against driving anywhere near that area on Saturdays, because it's so crowded with the Farmer's Market, but the worst part is finding parking, which isn't an issue if we're taking the car to a mechanic, so. We hopped in the car, navigated the slow crazy moron-filled traffic, and dropped off the car with a very nice mechanic. Then we strolled over to the Coffee Mill and got some lunch, and strolled over to the Farmer's Market and got assorted veggies, and returned to the car, which passed the smog test, and all was well. Very painless, and back home I renewed the car registration online, and didn't even have to pay a late fee. The future is a wondrous place.

For dinner last night I made baked wrapped tilapia with a topping of, well, all sorts of stuff -- chile, green onion, garlic, soy sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil, maple syrup. Served on a bed of coconut rice (with a little cinnamon). It came out really well! I'm trying to cook more fish, and make more healthy meals, for Heather and the unborn Pixel. Tonight we're having rice noodles and stir-fried vegetables with a sweet Thai sauce. Tomorrow, salad and grilled chicken. Yeah. We're planning our meals. Which will, we hope, stop us from grabbing burritos on the way home from work or ordering pizza quite so often...

Last night we got antsy and ran out of Gilmore Girls DVDs (or, as we call it, Estrogen Girls, because I feel myself becoming more and more feminine every time I see the opening credits) and decided to go see Knocked Up, as we were great fans of Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared and liked The 40-Year-Old Virgin. It was a sweet and raunchy little film (and it really needed the raunchy to offset the otherwise too-treacly sweetness), and seeing the actors from earlier Apatow projects working together again was like hanging out with old friends. Some hilariously funny lines. And Heather being pregnant made us extra-receptive to the subject matter, which didn't hurt. Recommended if you feel most rom-coms don't have enough crude sexual and scatological humor, or want more sweetness in your raunchy comedy.

I hear from my translator Yoshio Kobayashi that "Impossible Dreams" has been published in Japanese magazine Hayakawa SF. Can't hurt my chances with Japanese Hugo voters, I suppose...

I read a few Theodore Sturgeon stories last night and now, as usual when I read his stories, I despair that I will never write anything so good, and I'm determined to try harder.