And why the sea is boiling hot

And whether pigs have wings... (Don't ask.)

Last night was hell. Mini-Bump is to Bump as a bris is to a pat on the back. We are so oversubscribed that I had to drop people already entered, close policy, and sit in the chez dungeon banging my head against the newly painted wall wishing I could just listen to bossa nova records. I sent out an email to almost everyone I should have explaining the situation. In my inbox today are all their responses, plus messages from people I should have included but didn't. I can't bring myself to open any of them.

Is it vacation time yet?

And speaking of inertia, in the midst of all this, I heard from the Nostrumite, who tells me that he has shut down the TWHS site for a while. He is in a state of permanent depression over the team's inability to communicate any better than he had been communicating for them. Plus, he's up to his own neck in forensicia and incomprehensible novvies, not to mention the inescapable growth of Mini-Mite. "You can feel the baby kicking," he tells me. It won't be long before he and Odelie are up to their eyeballs in diapers, although I wouldn't put it past the lad to try out this newfangled train-em-the-first-week approach that's all the rage these days. Apparently babies prefer not to poop in their diapers; this is something that children and parents can agree on at a much earlier stage of life than originally believed, at least in the scrutable West. It may also be the last thing children and their parents ever agree on, but that's another thing altogether.

Tonight, for a change, poker! It's been a while since my group has gotten together because Shadowman Junior won't come unless the Fifteenth Beatle is there, and everyone else has been jumbled up for one reason or another, and poker with fewer than six is like, oh, I don't know, some kind of brisian metaphor—you do the work here for once. We're playing at Burgers' house, which is nice for me because it's right around the corner. Burgers, by the way, says that I can probably move my blog to jimmenick.com without too much sturm und drang, and I probably will give it a shot after Bump. I did update this, anyhow. I'm not thrilled with it, but it's a start. That damned Photoshop is just not my kind of program: