Thank goodness he blacked out after one drink.

Despite what you might have read at Gawker, we ITM co-bloggers actually enjoy each other's company and don't refer to each other via abusive epithets when out of ear shot. (While it is true that I call Karl "The Scold," I call him that to his face. He has in fact been quite scoldy to me this conference).

We ITMers and a cohort of our BABEL supporters had dinner together last night. The repast commenced badly, with the Tiny Shriner demanding quite imperiously

1. to be removed from my coat pocket
2. to sit at the table with the adults
3. to have a booster seat so that he could see something other than those areas of human bodies that used to get medieval monks' knickers all knotted cowls all crumpled
4. that he be given more of a say in blog content
   

He also kept winking at Eileen, and I could tell she was getting very uncomfortable -- he muttered something about being better than any damn gnome. Tiny then went on to lecture us about how our readership isn't as high as it could be, how our posts are predictable and do not feature Tiny Shriners nearly enough, how if he hears one more time how much we love each other he is going to hurl Tiny Chunks all over our oven roasted garlic appetizer spread. When he began to implore us seriously to start featuring "All Naked Tiny Shriner Tuesdays," we knew we had to act.

MKH gave him a glass a wine. He drank with gusto, reeled for a few minutes, and .... well, let's just say that dinner was a lot quieter after that.