Jeremy’s green card arrived today. A billion thanks to Kathy for FedExing it over, and to our awesome attorneys Minette and Sheryl for working on this for five-and-a-half years.

We had our first meeting with Minette when Claire was six weeks old and snoozing peaceably in her sling. Claire woke up about ten minutes in and gurgled graphically. We apologized, but Minette said not to worry:

“Those are perfectly legitimate noises.”

So! We have it under legal advice.

[16:55] ian_envivio: have you seen the healthy but creepy M&S grocery shop where everything is prepackaged in plastic tubs
[16:56] mizchalmers: i obtain my food units from there every day
[16:56] ian_envivio: it looks like a hippy/western healthy version of a japanese inner city supermarket
[16:57] mizchalmers: the british and the japanese have a lot in common
[16:57] mizchalmers: tea, war
[16:57] ian_envivio: love of the monarchy
[16:57] mizchalmers: crazitude

My sense of humour has returned! The peanut gallery cries: How can you tell? It is raining in Cambridge which is far more appropriate, pathetic fallacy-wise, because I can stomp through puddles and properly enjoy my crankiness. Also my cousin has turned up after I was worried about her.

Cambridge is terribly suburban. The car rental places close at 1pm on a Saturday, for example, and the local theatre is showing Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Aspects of Love. No link for you, hackmeister; not after the Venetian in Vegas, where Phantom of the Opera was playing in the lifts, on infinite loop.

I read Porterhouse Blue. What a vilely sexist, not-very-funny mess that was. Better books since, notably Our Horses In Egypt with its lovely breathless vernacular prose style rather like Mitford. I was especially pleased that author Rosalind Bulben credited the Anzacs with taking Damascus, and not that idiot Lawrence. Fighting words! But you know it’s true!

[10:27] skud11111: morning!
[10:27] mizchalmers: mmm
[10:27] mizchalmers: i sneezy
[10:27] skud11111: oh noes
[10:27] skud11111: i itchy
[10:29] skud11111: can’t figure out if it’s allergies, just dry skin, or whether i’m imagining it.
[10:29] mizchalmers: i think it’s allergies
[10:29] mizchalmers: i get nosebleeds
[10:29] mizchalmers: and this feeling like an el alamein fountain of pain in my sinuses
[10:30] mizchalmers: sinii?
[10:30] skud11111: ow
[10:30] skud11111: sinupodes
[10:30] mizchalmers: stupid sexy pollen
[10:30] skud11111: arboreal bukkake
[10:30] skud11111: i had to explain arboreal bukkake to chris at the gym the other day
[10:30] skud11111: or more to the point, i had to explain bukkake
[10:30] skud11111: had to.
[10:30] skud11111: in the middle of a set of squats
[10:30] skud11111: you know how it is.
[10:31] mizchalmers: permission to blog?
[10:31] skud11111: go ahead.

J: I read Overclocked.

R: Mmm?

J: Really liked it except for one story.

R: “When Sysadmins.”

J: Exactly.

R: I had to stop reading it after the baby died.

In unison: I wonder if he could write it now?

LATER. In a tacqueria. There are TACOS. R beats J for no apparent reason.

J: Ow.

R: My ovaries hurt.

J: And?

R: It’s your fault.

J: How?

R: You are the patriarchy. If it weren’t for you we’d all be living in the woods in a big happy lesbian commune, and my ovaries wouldn’t hurt. Isn’t that right, Jamey?

Jamey: Your ovaries would still hurt, but we’d have a drum circle about it.

WE ALL start to DRUM on the tacqueria table. JULIA stares for a moment, then DANCES.

…or more accurately back from Manhattan, where I did a spit-take over Spitzer and saw the market exeunt, pursued by Bear.

Much to report, in particular: Ozick, Hughes, Roth, Shadowunit.org. Don’t touch that dial.

The scariest, funniest, most heartbreaking, most romantic Doctor Who episode ever.

R: I swear sometimes I think that cat moves when I close my eyes.

J: Don’t be silly.

R: No, look, bite marks!

My cold has been gaining ground day by day, and today I was particularly sore-throaty and unthinking. I decided to make mulled wine. I was a bit surprised at how hard it was to get the cork out of the cheap Spanish red, but I finally did it, and dumped half the bottle into a saucepan with water and sugar and cinnamon and lemons and oranges.

Then I realized I had not opened the Protocolo but the 1996 St Henri Shiraz that Peter and Lucy Chubb gave us as a wedding gift, with instructions to open it on our tenth anniversary. The one I have been warning our cat-sitters away from, lo these many years.

Oh.

My.

God.

It does marry beautifully with lamb, it turns out. Jeremy had made a gorgeous shepherd’s pie, and Jack made salad. Even mulled, the St Henri was sensational.

I am the world’s biggest dork.

Obligatory happy ending: I found a vintage wine store in Boston that had a few bottles left and ordered them for our actual tenth anniversary. But it will be hard to beat the anecdotal value of this particular bottle. Thanks, Peter and Lucy! It was a brilliant evening (and my sore throat is greatly soothed.)