Yesterday was pretty much a wash. The day after a conference I inevitably wake up feeling like I�ve just run a marathon. I�m not just tired from lack of sleep. I�m physically exhausted. My muscles hurt.

Today I am on the mend, although I�ve still decided to work in bed instead of in my office. But that really has as much to do with the fact that my office has become the Birthday Central. And also because it�s about 30 degrees below zero down there today. My toes curl up inside my shoes if I even think about descending the wooden stairs.

The paper went well. Very well, actually. I got fan mail, which is always fun. There were only a dozen or so people there, being the very last paper on the last session of five days of intense academics. But it was a very friendly and attentive crowd. They asked good questions. My husband and my sister-in-law also came to listen, which was really nice. We all repaired to my mother-in-law�s for the afternoon.

This morning was spent on preliminary birthday shopping. My parents will arrive on Friday, so I�m trying to get my head out of my books and onto things like menu planning and laundry. I still haven�t sorted out the logistics of AJ�s present. We got him a small aquarium and will get a betta fish to go in it later in the week. I was hoping to give it to him all set up, but I�m not quite sure how to do that, as we�re planning on installing it in his bedroom and the water needs to sit in the tank for 24 hours before we can introduce the fish. So I may end up just hiding the fish in a bowl for a day and wrapping up the aquarium paraphernalia. Otherwise we�re faced with moving a full aquarium (albeit only a 2.5 gallon aquarium) up two flights of stairs. I�m worried about this. I hope I don�t kill any fish. I wonder what Mrs. Stein will think of the newcomer?

On our errands this morning, AJ and I stopped in �The Birdy Store� (the place we get our seed for the outdoor feeders) so I could replace a piece the destructive raccoons removed from the feeder that hangs outside AJ�s window. AJ sat down to color in the kids� area while one of the two enormous felines, P., (I�d guess this one is close to 25 pounds) came over to say hello. Normally AJ follows the cats around the store trying to pet them, but today he was intent on coloring some emerald green goldfinches, so poor P. was left to rub his enormous body around AJ�s chair. When AJ wasn�t paying him the proper amount of respect, he took matters into his own paws and jumped on the table in front of AJ, sitting down squarely on AJ�s picture. AJ barely flinched as he tried to color around P.�s capacious paws and twitching tail. Finally he asked me to move P. (which is where my estimate of weight comes from), so I did, but repaid P. with some thorough scratching under his jaw. I was rewarded with loud purring and a shower of white fur.

I also took AJ with me to vote. AJ wanted to read every name on the ballot, which was how I noticed that our governor�s name is misspelled (it read �Ron� instead of �Rod�). Oops. (I feel your pain Ron, er, Rod. My name was misspelled on my conference nametag yet again) AJ is proudly wearing an �I voted� sticker on his belly -- �I want it low down enough so I can see it,� he said when I tried to stick it closer to his shoulder.

And now I must abandon you and do some editing. I think someone at this conference might have heard me say something about when I was finally going to turn this monster in. I am behind again, but I am also inspired by borogoves and lemming who are both turning in their theses in a matter of days/hours/minutes. You go, girls!

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