((((Kristin and Byron)))) If he's eating, that's a good sign.

I had chicken pox when I was 6. Some kid in the neighborhood got it from somewhere, and the virus spent most of the winter sweeping through the neighborhood. I was the last and was so sick I spent an entire weekend on the couch.

I never had the pox, but have the immunity somehow.

I am beyond annoyed at my back pain. I have had to cancel Restaurant Week plans TWICE already, and frank, it's not looking too great to get together with you though the menu looked AWESOME.

My older brother had the chicken pox for two weeks, I got it for two weeks as he was getting better, and then my little brother got it for two weeks as I was getting better. Poor my mom and dad! But at least we were all through with it at once.

My older brother had the chicken pox for two weeks, I got it for two weeks as he was getting better, and then my little brother got it for two weeks as I was getting better. Poor my mom and dad! But at least we were all through with it at once.

This was our family. I started it all...the day after my baby brother came home from the hospital. So, not only was mom dealing with a newborn and two toddlers, she also had three cases of chicken pox. Poor thing. And her mom couldn't come help, because she had just been through chemo for breast cancer.

How old is this director, Fay? Three?

The anti-vaccination people make me crazy. As others have mentioned, the only way to keep a disease from spreading is for a significant percentage of the population to be immune. I had measles, mumps and chicken pox, and I don't wish them on anyone. I was very sick with measles and still remember days of hallucinating because my fever was so high.

The "evidence" for the autism-vaccine link is almost completely circumstantial and anecdotal. The reasoning used to support that link could just as well prove that cell phones, Sesame Street, color television or the space shuttle causes autism.

Is it wrong of me that my brother's invitation to come to Easter dinner just makes me tired? I want to see baby niece, of course, but I'll be seeing them all up in DE the following weekend and the thought of driving out to their place (about an hour away) for the third time in about a month is just exhausting to me. Also the thought of having something planned for Sunday.

I'm sure I'll go but ... tired.

He's in his mid/late 20s. And we're acting together in another play in May, playing husband and wife. He is a nice boy. I don't want to be a jackass. I think I already have been, in a number of ways, inasmuchas I care very much about narrative, and think that things should make narrative sense unless there's a bloody good reason for them not to, and thus I poke my oar in and say "...but what about...?" quite often.

But we're going to be working together on another play. And I don't want us to be all shitty with each other.

Legal Geek: I keep refreshing links waiting for someone to summarize the oral arguments from the Heller case this a.m. at the Supreme Court. Latest word is that the arguments probably won't end for another 15 minutes or so.

Legal Geek: I keep refreshing links waiting for someone to summarize the oral arguments from the Heller case this a.m. at the Supreme Court. Latest word is that the arguments probably won't end for another 15 minutes or so.

I had to turn off the radio this morning because that case makes me so mad!

Connie's World, or, How fast can one go through several thousand dollars of Social Security settlement?

All the credit cards are gone, paid off, out of here. I can answer the phone with impunity now, and odds are it won't be ringing nearly as much. Yay.

But, damn, my husband can shop. If anyone is monitoring our bank account and computer usage, it looks like we're about to ship off in the middle of the night for a secret South American location or something--spare clips for his no-longer-produced German Lugar, bids on PropertyRoom.com for seized gems and jewelry (which we lost, thank heaven for residual frugality), the practice at the shooting range, the new .22 pistol--I expect ATF to show up when we start putting together the trip to Vegas. Hopefully the X-Files Ultimate Collection and the Firefly/Serenity purchase I made from Amazone will convince any observers that we're not putting together something clandestine.

The vast majority of the money has gone to ancient bills that have haunted us. The rest of the purchases are going towards Hubby's feelings that he's Done Me Wrong all these years. I was on the phone with him when he was going through PropertyRoom.Com (where police departments etc. put their seized property, the collection is amazing), and he was saying, "Do you want a diamond watch? What about those ruby earrings?" Fortunately he has a self-imposed limit of $50 on stuff like that.

I tried to tell him last night that I much preferred cash in the bank to jewelry I'm never going to wear, but he looked me in the eye and said, "I've never been able to give you the things you deserve, I'm making up for lost time." How the heck do you tell a man, "No, you may not be the man you've longed to be for ten years and show your wife how much you appreciate her"?

I wish I could claim it's frugality and not massive distrust of fate that makes me leery of the spending", but I'm more than capable of frittering money away. It's the chutzpah of putting a couple of hundred dollars at a time down for something that makes me twitch. I love that he wants to get me stuff, but a diamond watch is not really something that fits into my lifestyle.