Quick update
Flew up to Tacoma Friday night. Failed pretty much entirely to sleep that night. (Was almost falling asleep reading subs, but decided to sort some photos before going to sleep, and by the time I went to bed I was wide awake. Have decided to try to think of sleepiness as a gift from now on, and not discard it.)
Successfully celebrated Grandma's 96th birthday on Saturday. (Coffee helped.) One cousin couldn't make it 'cause she was coordinating volunteers for Dean in Seattle; another couldn't make it 'cause he was in Colombia; I'm not sure why another one couldn't make it. But most of the immediate family (Grandma's sons, and some of their spouses and kids) showed up at one time or another.
Hung out with assorted family members all day, including dinner with Jay & Holly and Holly's parents. Memo to waiters at overpriced and extremely slow Italian restaurants in Tacoma: if a customer asks you to wrap up some food to go, and what's on the plate is three pieces of one kind of pizza and a half-eaten piece of another kind, don't throw out the half-eaten piece before wrapping up the others.
Played cards Saturday night (I'm gradually getting the hang of four-handed Pinochle, after playing the three-handed version all my life; Holly and Grandma beat me and Jay on the last hand, but only barely, and only because I was too timid in bidding—we were ahead on points, but they'd gotten the bid) and went to bed early.
Sunday morning, got up, read subs, chatted with Grandma some. Drove up to Seattle, spent a nice couple hours with Debby B. & John P. and baby Rose, that last of whom is about 16 months old, has a 150-word vocabulary, likes lions, can eat most of an omelette by herself, and has (like many small children I've met) an absolutely lovely smile. Utterly neglected to take photos of any of the family, sigh.
Hung out at Starbucks in Capitol Hill for a couple hours (taking advantage of their wireless Internet thingy), then met up with Ellie W., who'd just taken a practice MCAT. Showed her my photos (I'd showed some to Debby, but nobody else had had time to look at them), then didn't have nearly enough time chatting with her. Rushed off to airport, and discovered that my flight was half an hour later than I'd thought. Usually I check my calendar, but this time I got the times mixed up and didn't double-check. But at least it wasn't half an hour off in the other direction.
I really ought to go up there more often. I don't see folks up there nearly often enough, and there were several SeaTac-area friends I didn't get a chance to contact at all.
One bit of magazine news and then I must sleep: our final total number of submissions in January 2004 came to 329. (Not counting duplicates and simultaneous subs and multiple submissions at once and such.) That's up from 270 in January 2003, and 226 in January 2002. A year-over-year increase (as they say in the business world) of nearly 22%. After the huge-volume week at the beginning of the month, we returned to near-normal levels for a while; then last week was our second-highest-volume week ever, at 68 subs. (It was looking like it would be over 80 for a while.) But my guess is that after the news of our pay increase falls off Ralan's "Latest News" list, volume will go down substantially.
Okay, off to sleep for me.
