Hello? Hello? Is this thing on? This time, the huge gap in blog posts is not because of my slackassery (do you like that word? I just made it up) but unforeseen circumstances. On Saturday 12 September we left for vacation. We went to Clarks Hill Lake - pictures of nature and of pets (mostly of pets) are here, though I did not realize until I had named the entire set that the darned lake is plural, so all my pictures are titled "Clark Hill Lake [#]". I'd fix them all, but suspect that actual effort might be required so they'll remain misnamed.

We'd asked while sorting the rental arrangements, so we knew they didn't have high-speed internet available, but figured we could make do with dial-up access. After all, we were on vacation so minimal internet usage would be okay. However, upon arrival we found that we would not be making do with dial-up as there was no landline at the lakehouse. The owners had dispensed with that as being unnecessary as these days everyone brought and used their cellphones. So, no internet for 6 days! I missed cnn.com and I missed being able to blog at leisure. Most of all, I missed being able to tweak my Fantasy Football team, which I'd assumed I could do before the season started. (56 points, last in the league, but what's even sadder is that upon my return home, I discovered that I'd left the team set up pretty much as I'd have wanted...)

But anyway, vacation! They had a large swimming pool and a grill, so on Saturday once we'd unloaded, we made a grocery run. On Sunday, we had a small family party: my mom, Alan's parents, his brother, sister and niece, our friends Mark & Mary Jo. We had our usual party fare: cheeses and crackers, raw veggies and dip, burgers, hot dogs, flatiron steak and grilled portobello mushrooms. Yum. Eliza, our little niece, loves to swim so I took her for a couple of rounds in the pool. Much fun. My mom stayed over and the next morning we met Alan's parents and Christopher for breakfast. Mom returned to the lakehouse for another round of snacks and swimming. It was great.

Pulling a Bo: my younger brother Bo had (has?) this habit of getting a drink, taking a few sips, sitting it somewhere, forgetting about it and getting another. After he visits, one will find 6 - 8 Coke cans (or beer bottles, depending) sitting about randomly, with varying levels of emptiness. So if you do this, it's called "pulling a Bo" - often Alan will see me wandering aimlessly about the house and ask me what I'm doing. My response is some variation on "trying not to pull a Bo", "pulling a Bo with my water", etc. So this weekend, my mom pulled a Bo and we took pictures of her drinking two beers at once.

Which probably would have been funnier if, instead of explaining the origin of a family in-joke, I'd used the photographic evidence as the basis for some fictitious tale of her getting all tore up and dancing on the billiard table, but now it's too late.

I don't want to pepper the blog with photographs - you can look at them on Flickr via the above link if you're interested, but I was pleased with this one, the lighting and the reflections.

I was pleased to find a place that allowed us to bring the pets. Before I left, a friend of mine asked what we were going to do with the fuzzy darlings, if she needed to look in on them. I told her they were coming along. "What about Finnovar?" she asked, rightly suspecting that our scorny kitteh would be less than pleased about being stuffed into his carrier for a road trip.

"Him too," I answered.

She said, "Don't take this the wrong way but I'm totally picturing you as the Clampetts, heading down the road in that rickety old truck with a rocking chair in the back, all the pet crates and a chicken coop! Please tell me you're going to leave the chickens at home!"

"Nope, no chickens this trip. And we're leaving the goats and pigs behind as well."

"That's a relief. The goats probably wouldn't enjoy boating on the lake."

"They would be disgruntled. And you know what they say: a disgruntled goat gives no good milk."

"BWAHAHAHA! Girl, you just AIN'T. RIGHT."

"A disgruntled goat gives no good milk" is the new tagline for this blog, I think.

I spent one entire day doing nothing but reading books, eating cheese & crackers, and sipping wine. I think I might have taken a couple of hour-long swim breaks in there, but mostly nothing but reading/cheese/wine. There's not much that could make a day more perfect, in my opinion.

Back home now, but still with a few days off before I return to work. This afternoon, we're going to see 9. I hope to get a few mini-reviews published, although you probably don't need me to tell you that the newest Cheezburger and this one by Chelsea Handler are chock-full of laughs.