Personal: Checking In

• A final pre-baby cookout at the Lloyds', rewarded by "Baby Boy" Lloyd being born this past morning at 8am, Amy and Baby Boy both well.

• Down ill again for a few days. While trying to keep my head from exploding from the bug, I watched an outrageous amount of Grey's Anatomy in between sessions of reading Oberman's Luther: Man Between God and the Devil. Those of you awaiting the emails mentioned above can hate me now.

• Fr. Fahey finally signed off on the dissertation outline, pending a number of cosmetic polishes. I was allowed to begin to approach our chosen board members: so far, everyone has accepted....

• Dinner out with Diane at the Twisted Fork (they took the Rosemary Chicken off the menu!) also featured a most tasteful and unexpected present of Mark Waid and Alex Ross' Kingdom Come, followed by a wonderfully silly night out with her and Matt at an underground bowling lane/video arcade/triple bar that I'd walked past a number of times and never knew existed. She made me play my first game of Missile Command since the Reagan Administration. Matt taught me arcane secrets about Jack Kirby.

• And the last four days were given over to the always-wonderful, always-exhausting opportunity to babysit Grace and Haley while Leslie and Jim revisited their honeymoon location of St. Martin's. I shared the task with Mom, which makes it much more workable than just one person trying to watch them alone. Haley was talking much more than I'd heard before, although it took her much longer to warm up to me than it had in October, whereas she was absolutely smitten with "Gramma!" Grace was a charmer and also had much to say, but now in greater detail and whimsy, as she and her little sister approach 4 and 2, respectively. • Upon arrival I discovered another unexpected gift, this one being from Leslie, and was the complete first season of Smallville, which was utterly cool of her. Likely she's never watched an episode herself, but she could still make skillful judgments of taste, which is way cool. In fact, I brought my DVD of the first season of Teen Titans with me, an episode of which the girls watched, entranced, stunned by the utter change from Barney, of which I watched an unconscionable amount. All part of my nefarious plan to slowly corrupt the girls away from being sports watchers, like their folks....