one more turn around the Sun

Yesterday was my 56th birthday. Which is why I decided to work from home. Which is how breakfast came to consist not of the usual bowl of dry Corn Chex, but of delicious waffles made by my wife. They were quite filling, so much so that they sustained me thru the next 7 hours of work, which were so hectic that all I ate during that time consisted of a few peanuts and of a tiny bit of cheese. No underdone potato though, which is too bad because it might have led to my being visited by the ghost of Bob Marley. But I digress. After I was finally able to call it quits with office work, Sue and I went to Garduño, where I made up for the earlier lack of nourishment with their aptly named Burrito Magnifico. We then dropped by the comicbook store, where I acquired the first issue of a new "Atomic Robo" story, which begins with his making fun of Steve Jobs's iPad before he gets a call about an imperiled orbiter, then another call about a Bletchley Park building that has vanished. We came home and spent the rest of the evening in the living-room, doing what our old couple usually does: Sue worked on her latest novel, and I read. I got some nice presents: a Barnes & Noble gift card, a Starbucks gift card, the BluRays of "The Blues Brothers" and of "Flash Gordon", and new sneakers.

I also got lots of wellwishing in my emailbox.
Thanks, all of you.

the case of the coughing kitty

I just came back from a trip to the vet. These last few days, ever since a neighborhood feline had shown up in our backyard and had had a fight with her, Agatha the Cat Genius had been having coughing and hacking fits, three of them yesterday, so I thought it best to have her looked at. The doc says it most likely is a bacterial infection she picked up from another kitty, but her lungs sound healthy, and her glands aren't swollen, so she said to let Nature follow its course, but to bring her back if things take a turn for the worse after one week.