Hello, blogsphere! I'm back from vacation! Actually, I got back late Saturday night but the air conditioner at The Hellhole was still inoperable (yes, that's right, inoperable after half a dozen service visits, including two while I was gone, the replacement of the entire unit plus thermostats at more-thousands-than-I-can-type-without-cringing, INOPERABLE) so I've been camped out at my parents' house.

Not that there aren't computers at my parents' house suitable for blogging, oh, no, but if anyone were to attempt to actually USE one, well...one would soon sense, over the left shoulder, my father crouching in the corner, eyes glowing with primitive vengeance, Gerber knife clinched in his teeth, growling like a feral beast, because one was MESSING with his COMPUTER STUFF. And that kind of thing sorta tends to sap one's creativity.

Even if one had parental permission to touch a parental computer, they only have dial-up, and not just dial-up, but heartrendingly slow dial-up. They aren't too cheap to upgrade, it's just that they live so far out in the boondocks that DSL isn't available. Cable modem, you say? Ha-HA!, I laugh. They live so far out in the boondocks that there isn't any CABLE. But, y'know, they have satellite, there's DirecTV and all, it's not like I was raised by WOLVES or anything.

I didn't blog from work because my job, or more precisely, my boss, is such that no one does my work except me. The Boss is adamant that certain things are to be done by Helly or Not. At. All. No one covers for me or "fills in" if I'm not there, which is both bad and good. It's bad in that the work piles up and piles up so I'm totally snowed under when I return from an absence but it's kinda good because no one else is goofing with my stuff. I've been on the other side of the equation and it's frustrating to return after someone else has done your job because, whether it's that they aren't as familiar with it, were doubly busy or just not you, no one does your job quite the way you'd have done it. All in all, I'm satisfied with the arrangement but the point is, I returned to a desk covered in notes, messages, contracts, disasters and Agenda Items, so I didn't have time to blog from work. I still caught it, though, because (utterly unlike Dooce), it seems The Boss was BORED by my lapse in blogging and expects better of me in the future.

SO, that vast excuse having been written, we had a wonderful vacation. My lovely, lovely friend Michelle, who is the most empirically beautiful person I know that's an actual person - as in, not an airbrushed model or a starvingactress - lent us her HUGE, LUXURIOUS, BEAUTIFUL beach villa and it was magnificent and relaxing and SHWEEET. If you're curious, this is the resort where we stayed, which is in Miramar Beach just outside Destin. There are a few amusing anecdotes and many Flickr pictures to be uploaded as time permits, including actual unretouched non-Photoshopped pictures of my fiance Alan actually wearing bathing trunks, actually walking onto a beach and actually getting into an ocean (despite so many of his friends telling me it couldn't be done, MWHA HA HA HA HA, bow before my power ye puny mortal fools!). In the meantime, I'm catching up on all of your blogs and soon, I will take a moment to tell you of GateGeez, Ship-Christening Grandma, Sprocket, fine dining, books I read and the most scathingly amusing insult I ever articulated (according to Alan, anyway)!!! Coming soon, to a blog near you!