Protho didn't get to come up to the festival after all. When I talked to him later, he told me that he was having one of those days where you don't feel up to getting out of bed, much less driving to Ohio. Fine, I told him, we'll see you some other time. (The sound you hear is me squelching down frustration at having cleaned the apartment for guests, and not having any guests to see it.) So we'll have to drive to Pittsburgh sometime to visit. In the meantime, he'll just have to settle for hearing the MP3 of the performance, which I'll have up after I get the recording from the sound engineers.

It looks like we may be moving up our conception date! Eric's mother called last night and told him that Bryan and Linda are thinking about trying to have a baby. Eric was incensed and told her, "We're going first!" See, Bryan and Linda, although financially much better off than we are, are not prepared for a child. They can't even take care of their dog! They're both so extremely wrapped up in their careers that the poor puppy spends most of her time in a kennel, or staying with my mother-in-law. It's really sad.

Eric is convinced that we have to give birth first, just to "show them how it's done." I'm not opposed to a little brotherly rivalry if it means we move closer to our goals in the process. Eric says not this cycle, but the next will be our target. I've told him that these things can take time, that very few people actually achieve pregnancy on the first cycle they try, but he's convinced that we'll be the lucky ones, because I chart my cycles for contraception, anyway. I know that will help, but I'm also aware of how tricky it can be to get pregnant even when you have sex at the peak of fertility.