Still Feel Gone

Hullo all! I�m back to tickle my keyboard a bit after having set a new personal best in the category of �Complete Detachment From All Things Routine And Hideously Dull.� Yes, I�ve had myself a vacation. And there are many, many reflections and recollections to be chronicled but I am still shuffling the pages of the old brain diary. At this point, it is safe to report that the time was tremendously well spent. An agreeable balance was set between spending time with my lonesome versus with other friends or just folks. Several bright ideas blazed into my brain with startling ferocity so I�ve been inspecting the craters and assessing impact. Some writing was done. Some books were read. Scenery was soaked up�how nice to be in places where the horizon is busy with mountains and the land is calm and empty. And SF is so strange and beautiful a city to my urban sensibilities. I�d missed it more than I expected. The PacNW and I sort of got married�everything I did there was alternately old, new, borrowed, or blue. And then I got drunk and danced. My driving tan is still dark and deep.

Now it�s on to further travels, but these are in the service of Our Feckless Leader. And while traveling on the government dime (and your tax dollars) can be fiendishly rewarding, time will be more limited as far as my own pursuits in cities far afield go�e.g. swilling coffee/beer, wandering aimlessly through neighborhoods unknown, meeting locals, seeing friends (if applicable), feeling curious and anonymous. I like being the capricious tourist and it�s not too different from what I do here, except for the unknown parts. So work or not, I remain a traveling fool and it�s off again this weekend to the Windy City with barely time enough to wash my dainties. I�m looking forward to this one though and have grand plans to venture out on the town and see brother and his girl as well. They live together now, and girlfriend and I have the same first name. If they get married, I will take my revenge on the ookiness of this coincidence by stealing her identity. Surely her credit is better than mine.

It�ll be back to our regularly scheduled program soon.