I was completely, completely stunned by the trouble my parents went to for my birthday. I never had balloons on the mailbox and the house decorated like that, when I was a kid. It just blew me away. I figured it was just going to be a nice, quiet little get-together with our relatives for cake. Instead, there were quite a few presents and things. I'm still stunned.

The card from my parents--I almost cried while reading it--not bad crying, just sniffles.

Anyway, it was a very lovely birthday, and I'll be writing thank-you letters to all of them, this week.

I'm continuing to work out the IMS story. I realized that I'm going to have to describe eight more years of story history that hasn't been written yet. Eeep! And I'm going to have to get more into Settim's head. Ew. Gross. Triple-eeep. I know exactly why Settim is the way he is, but it's still icky.

Back to work on the outline...