Hey, it’s less than a…

Hey, it's less than a week to my birthday! Time is just rushing by. I keep seeing M'ris's notes about her birthday, but somehow, I didn't quite connect it to mine, even though it's the same one. I'll be thirty! I know it's weird, but I'm actually kind of relieved to be done with my twenties. There was a lot of confusion and insecurity in there; while I'm not completely free of all that now, there's much less of it. I sometimes wish there were a way to speed up the maturation process. Something other than having awful things happen to you, that is. Anyway, gifts and e-mail and such are certainly welcome. It's been a rough month; some good thoughts would be lovely. The best address for cards is probably the post office box:

Mary Anne Mohanraj
P.O. Box 11453
Salt Lake City, UT 84147

I won't pick them up until mid-August, but they should be safe there. It's a smallish box, so don't send presents there, please -- I'm not sure what they do if your box gets too full, but it might not be good. Hmm...presents sent to my home address will be forwarded to David's place for the next two weeks -- that should work fine, I think. Ditto for stuff off the Amazon wishlist. If you need an address for me, just ask.

Quick note to Kalyani -- your e-mail is bouncing; your mailbox is too full. Please empty it. I've added you to the readers' list. As for making the stained glass thingies, any decent craft store will have a whole section on the stuff, complete with glass blanks, paints, kits and instructions. They're really very straightforward.

I'll probably check back in later; right now, I need to go do a phone conference with the NY editors. Lots of working on BW these days; lots of Star Trek in the evenings. David has most of Deep Space 9 taped; we've been watching the last season, most of which I missed the first time around. About six more episodes to go until the end. Very satisfying to watch, and distracting. Star Trek is oddly comforting. I think it has something to do with its idealistic vision of the future -- even when you have scheming politics and occasional nastiness, the Federation is still *supposed* to stand for truth, goodness, IDIC, etc. It's a fundamental assumption that most of the characters take for granted. I like it.

At heart, I still want the universe to make sense.

12:30 p.m. Gods, lots of work still to do on BW. I'm going to dive back into it in a moment, but I should first 1) note that David only has a little of DS9 (he corrected me -- he has most of Next Gen), and 2) warn M'ris that I have in fact been known to be gauche on occasion, so she should not necessarily rely on me for etiquette guidance. Though at least we can be gauche together, and if enough people follow along, then I don't think it counts as gauche anymore. Isn't that how it works?

I am also not subtle. I love birthday e-mail and cards and presents! My presents from Karina arrived today and the tissue paper is torn on one of them and I am being *so* good not peeking until she tells me it's okay to open them before my birthday. At least the one that's partly opened. That's not unreasonable, right? Right?