continuing birthday

I think it's going to be a groggy day here all around. We had a good party, but then markgritter couldn't sleep. So I'm not sure how the brush-clearing will go. "Slowly and carefully," possibly. Ista is sleeping under my desk. She is being a good girl. Let's just hope she stays that way for the rest of the day. She just yipped in her sleep, softly. I find that devastatingly cute.

Lots of people came to my birthday party, and I felt fêted, and there were enough people that I didn't get a chance to talk to all of them. For the first half of the party I was more or less glued to my usual spot on the couch, where Ista could tuck her butt in and examine the strange monkeys from a secure position. The health stuff that's been bugging me lately did not stop bugging me last night (after about an hour of party, I was exhausted, and the party went on something like five times that long before I declared it No Longer My Birthday and wandered up to bed), but it also didn't stop me from enjoying myself, and I don't think it stopped anyone else, either.

I still have some birthday presents yet to come, I'm told, and I got some yesterday, too, and all is lovely on that front, with ghost bears and dinosaurs and all sorts of things. And I just finished The Letter of Marque and started matociquala's Scardown. So far I only got two books written by people on the friendslist for this birthday, but in addition to the promised later gifts, I also have gift certificates, which may serve in that direction; we'll see.

This post is not actually about my new icon, but I'm tired of using the all-too-appropriate tired icon, and hey! I got a new icon! It's me and a rebuilt bombe from Bletchley, and I'm mostly going to use it when I'm talking about Thermionic Night and the rest of those stories. (The e is important: a bombe, used for decoding Enigma signals, is not at all the same as a bomb, used for blowing stuff up.)