Today is my birthday! I had sushi for breakfast. (Just pre-made California roll from the local supermarket, but still...sushi for breakfast!) Tonight Daniel will take me someplace nice for dinner. I don't know where. I told him to surprise me.

Our Airport wireless base station quit working on Thursday or Friday, and so far I have been able neither to restore it to functionality nor to get my laptop on the internet by some other means. This is not helping me get caught up on my journal updating back log.

I had another insanely busy but fun weekend. Saturday was the symposium in honor of my grad school advisor, Jack Kirsch. It was fun to see so many of my old lab-mates (though there were some people that I'd hoped to see who ended up not being able to make it), and to meet some of the folks who'd preceded us. It was fun to recall some of the happy grad school memories (and I do have a lot of happy memories, in spite of everything.) It was like a strange kind of family reunion. The idea of family was referred to a lot, since it's quite common to think of one's graduate advisor as one's scientific parent. Jack is the progenitor of a pretty large and distinguished scientific lineage. I'm proud to be part of it. Even if, in some sense, I've turned out to be some kind of eccentric maiden aunt.

I've always liked eccentric maiden aunts, personally. They may be a bit dotty, but they know how to have fun.

Sunday was writers' group meeting. We had a good critique session. As usual, it left me revved up to write fiction. I did a bit of brainstorming on one of my current projects. I think maybe I'm starting to get it unstuck. (I've got too many projects that I'm working on right now, and all of them are sort of hanging fire. I need to just get one of them unstuck and finish it.)

Next weekend, I have absolutely no activities or social events planned. And I'm determined to keep it that way. I need a break!

Right now, back to work. Later!