We had a baby shower for Julia Friday at the office. We had it in the largest conference room, which, as someone remarked, seemed much smaller when practically every employee in the company was in it.

This is Jen, Tracy (in the background) and Julia, the honored guest. She hardly looks pregnant at all, even though the baby is due the end of March.

We had invited her husband, but he had a meeting and wasn't sure he could make it, so everyone just ate first and waited to see if he was going to be able to show up.

He did get there, which was nice.

They got lots of very cool stuff, aided by the fact that several of the people at the office--actually, almost all men . . . wait--all men--have babies or small children at home, so they knew exactly what to buy. Lots of cloth diapers for spit-up accidents, and lots of diaper rash ointment.

Here, Julia is reading aloud portions of a book they received--I can't remember the name of it, but it was about poo. All the different kinds, because, of course, once you have a baby (according to the new fathers), your world begins to revolve around, what else? Poo. Not Pooh, poo.

That's Kelly enjoying the story.

The rest of the photos are here; I used the Photoshop automatic photo gallery creator thing for the first time. It's pretty cool. I just downloaded the pictures from the camera, then told Photoshop to create a gallery, and it made the thumbnails and created the HTML pages for each photograph. Kind of a utilitarian design--not terribly exciting--but certainly adequate for the purpose.

I think I'm getting sick. Practically everyone at work has had either a bad cold or flu sometime in the past month or so; I've been congratulating myself that I haven't.

But yesterday I woke up with a sore throat, which is generally my first symptom. I tried to tell myself that it was just the dry air, and Bob started running the humidifier in the bedroom again, even though he'd stopped because he didn't think we needed it as much since we were keeping the house cooler, and with the cooler air, cool, damp air wouldn't be very pleasant.

But today I felt like it was starting in earnest--just sort of blah and achy, sniffling a little, the aforementioned sore throat, and tonight my lower back is achy.

I didn't leave the house today, just snuggled up under the afghan with Dinah and a book for most of the afternoon, and spent some time tonight playing with The Sims. Oh, and I watched a movie--The Matchmaker with Janeane Garofalo. I think it was a combination of the beginnings of the cold, the cold, dreary, damp weather, and the time of the month--it's just not that sad of a movie--I sat there and cried through most of it.

The movie is set in Ireland, and as the first scene started up, I was hit with an overwhelming feeling of nostalia--or something like nostalgia--for the British Isles, even though I've never been there. Not in this incarnation, anyway. And that feeling was followed by an almost immediate, and equally overwhelming, feeling of despair that I would probably never see them.

Kind of pitiful, eh?

I did enjoy the movie a lot, even though it made me cry. I've always felt a very strong kinship to Britain. I don't know if it's just because that's where my ancestors are from, or whether there's a deeper reason. I suppose that's reason enough, and I suppose that there's no real reason that I won't get over there at some point. Today it just seemed like a huge thing.