It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon

I persuaded the checkbook to balance and the washing machine came back from the dead again. I am caught up on laundry but for one load of clothes that needs folding. I turned 38 yesterday and have been enjoying Carrie Newcomer's new CD, a gift from my husband.

My early research project director accepted my revisions (I did not succumb to the temptation to include a couple of knock-knock jokes to see if she was actually reading the revised version), so as soon as I get comments back from the two people kind enough to proofread it for me, I'll get it printed up. Dissertation ho! (I hope it's clear that it's ho the interjection, as in Yukon __, not the noun.) On Friday my advisor, to my immense surprise, said I should consider myself done for now with reviewing the literature and move on to drafting. (Then she gave me ten more papers to read, but I'm not really complaining.)

Joe is visiting my in-laws this weekend and I am missing him something fierce. It's very quiet without him. Baby, on the other hand, is getting rowdier, thumping me harder and more often. I had persuaded myself that either I had an anterior placenta that was keeping me from feeling movement or else something was wrong.

In a few weeks I am taking the train to Chicago to meet up with all of my college roommates. We are going to see Melissa Etheridge, whose early albums were pretty much always on the turntable or in the tape player (aren't we old?) when we were living together. Funnily enough, three of the five of us are married to the men whose antics inspired us to belt out "Like the Way I Do" with such passion. (I bet I can still recite all the words to that one, though I haven't heard it more than a decade.) What were you listening to in college?

I will leave you with a recipe for the Best Sandwich in the History of the World, a sandwich I've made twice in the past week after thinking about it for a year: pan bagnat. Over and out from Lake Wobegon, where the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.