The Fates have conspired to give me the night off in honor of my birthday. I arrived at work only to learn that the printing press was experiencing "problems" and that nobody would know anything further until 1:00 am. Hearing this, and not wanting to sit around for hours, I got back in my car and drove home. This meant that Jen and I got to spend some extra time together! Yay! We occasionally talk about me getting a day job so we can share our evenings after the little ones are all in bed (not that they ever all stay asleep at the same time for very long). Tonight was sort of like a sneak preview. I like it. Later, I called my work to see if they had fixed the problem. It turns out that they had experienced some sort of power outage, and had managed to get a generator from somewhere, but there was still no E.T.A. on the papers. A subsequent call informed me that I needn't bother coming in because the papers probably wouldn't get there until 4:00 am. It's just as well. I wasn't looking forward to going back out again, even though the moon is beautiful and the night is crisp and foggy around the edges. Happy birthday to me. The only drawback to this is that I have to double deliver tomorrow night. If it were any other newspaper besides the Wall St. Journal, this wouldn't be too much of a hassle. The problem with the Journal is that each paper has an address label, which means that they have to be kept in order. Since I fold papers while I'm driving, I anticipate that I'll have an organizational nightmare on my hands tomorrow night as I juggle two days' worth of news. I must keep reminding myself that it's the challenges in life that keep us young.

Oh, here's a picture I drew while we were in Sherman. Lexy saw the picture I had drawn of Willow and insisted I draw one of him. It doesn't look like him to me, but he was satisfied with it and showed it to just about everybody. I had no illusions of being able to get Nathan or The Dickens to stand still long enough to draw them, but tried to draw The Dickens anyway (she asked me to). Of course, she only stood still for about two seconds. The rough sketch I had started looked more like an adult. I finished it today during a lull at work, and will post it once we fix the scanner (or buy a new one with our limitless funds).



cd I listened to while driving to and from work: Kemialliset Ystavat "Suurempi Pieni Palatsi"