ATTN DCistas! I am in your metro area, somewhat spur-of-the-momentously. If anyone wants dinner, drinks, and/or brunch between fencing tournaments I'll be in f2f. And in College Park, physically.

Not so much an announcement as a request. If anyone comes across old Schilling or McCormick glass spice jars like this: [link] for $2 each or less, I would really appreciate if you could snatch them up for me and I will reimburse you and cover shipping. The ones with green lids are what I am looking for.

THANKS

My little sis could use a fluent Spanish speaker to read over a very short speech, tonight if possible. She's in college but not at a high level. And, of course, she kind of needs it tonight. If you can help, please email me at my profile addy. Gracias!

I'd like some cat~ma for our Max, if there's any available. He was diagnosed with pneumonia over the weekend, and he may need ultrasound because of a shadow on the x-ray. We;re consulting with the vet.

Lou is gone.

About two hours ago he had seizures. We took him straight to the vet, and put him down about 75 minutes ago.

He will be missed, terribly.

Hey all-

I've mentioned this in thread, but Tom and I are moving to New Orleans! And on Monday May 10, after the movers get all our stuff, we will be hanging out at the Salem BeerWorks (in Salem, MA) at the bar, drinking beer and catching up with folks and saying goodbye. Localistas, feel free to drop in! 5/10, 6-9pm. If you have questions, you can find me in Natter or Bitches, or you can email me at my profile address.

THANK YOU THANK YOU from Dan and I for the lovely -- and quite unexpected -- wedding present! Wow -- Buffistae are, quite simply, the best people on the planet.

Please, lovely contributors, email me your IRL address (if you wish) so I may send out proper thank you's. Profile addy is good.

If not, please accept our humble thanks. How lovely and thoughtful you all are!

Dan and I are gobsmacked. In a wonderful way!

So, this is a two parter - first, thank you thank you thank you to the lovely and wonderful Buffistas that sent me such a beautiful bouquet of flowers! When you live in a foreign country and don't know a soul, you don't much expect the floral delivery folks to stop at YOUR house. They made my day! I don't know why I was so surprised, I guess I just temporarily forgot that the Buffistas are the most amazing and thoughtful group on the planet. I am blessed to be a part of such a group, even from a distance.

Secondly, an update, which I have been horribly remiss in offering up. As noted in my last post, I had an emergency C-section on March 31st. Unfortunately, I developed the nastiest abscess you ever did see in my incision. It was 4 centimeters deep at the beginning. I was in the hospital for two weeks. We are at home now, but I am still recovering. At this point the wound is less than 2 centimeters deep and seems to be clear of infection, but its still a freaking hole in my stomach! There is a nurse that comes daily (was twice a day until this week) to change my dressings. Its doing WAY better, I have very little pain now, and I am very mobile. The baby is doing AMAZING, she is growing insanely fast, weighing in at 9.9 pounds and measuring 22 inches already. Breastfeeding is going well, clearly. She is a complete mama's girl, she wants to be near me every single second, which is exhausting but wonderful at the same time.

Again, you're all welcome to keep tabs on us via my blog, though I'm lucky to manage once a week updates at this point. Or if you wanna bypass all the wordiness and just skip directly to the cute baby pictures, check out my Photobucket page.

Thank you again for the bouquet, and for being just generally wonderful!

I have more photos of Ryan up on Flickr: [link] Includes highlights from his first birthday party (his actual birthday starts about an hour from now - in two hours it'll be exactly one year since his birth at 1 a.m.), and saying farewell to his grandparents at the airport. They promise they'll be back later in the year. How could they not? [link]