With apologies to Lloyd Bridges for that title, I'm back. I take most of a month off and Richard Cohen gets re-listed on Drudge. Obviously, your humble Scourge has work to do! But that will have to wait a bit until the torrent of backlogged items gets washed away.
I stepped away for a while to address a crisis of whether to quit blogging or not. As you can see dear reader, I have decided to continue -- though posting may be a little more sporadic and bursty at times than in the past. To rebuild my barely adequate psychic defenses I spent two weeks in Southern California with the family where I logged on only once, though the capability was always available. So I think I blog like I drink, heavily but sporadically. Anyway, I proved to myself that I could step away if I wanted to, and that's important --at least to me. I didn't really miss blogging, which kind of surprised me, but I definitely fell out of the news cycle. I didn't even know Uday and Qusay had assumed room temperature for several days. Huzzah!!!
Before recounting the adventures in La-La land, I first must thank Andrea Harris who has graciously provided a forum for me away from Blogspot. Thank you webmistress!!! I'll also put in a kind word for Dodd Harris, Dean Esmay and several others who have offered to help me move in the past. Moving has been extremely easy, thanks to all of you. Archives and some other special features, including a blogroll, will follow soon.
And now for the vacation...
We stayed with some friends in San Diego who graciously put us up for most of two weeks. Highlights included visiting Old Town, Coronado Island, the Cabrillo National Monument (in a bizarre coincidence, the planning calendar I bought my wife last Christmas features lighthouses, and the lighthouse pictured this week is the one at Point Loma), La Jolla, the Miramar MCAS golf course (I shot an 84!), Torrey Pines (alas, I planned to play the North course one day and the South course the next, but a recurrence of gout in my left knee -- no doubt two weeks of heavy drinking and eating had something to do with this -- destroyed my opportunity to do so, so I had to settle for a shirt and a ball marker until my next visit), Sea World, a visit to Anza-Borrego where it was 115 degrees, many days at the beach; and a side trip to Anaheim where we went to Disneyland, Disney's California Adventure, and I had an evening out with Martin Devon.
My wife asked my what I enjoyed the most about the vacation and I told her it was not getting up for work in the morning. She assumed it was my night out with Martin, which was damned fine, but had it come after a day of work, I don't think I would have enjoyed it quite as much. I know I wouldn't have enjoyed going to work the next day! If you care, the first posted picture of me that I know of can be found in Martin's gracious writeup of our night out. I cannot improve upon his summary of our fine soiree.
Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure were nice, but they pale in comparison to Disneyworld and Epcot. The place is really showing it's age and it would have been nice if the rides hadn't broken down at least six times while we were on them over three days. Well, the kids loved it and all the little problems aside, I still admire what Disney has done. And while I understand the synergy of a media empire that has gone from being a Sunday night feature on NBC to one that includes ABC and ESPN, the incessant pushing of the X-Games and ABC sitcoms seems more than a little vulgar to me. I don't think Walt would have approved. But I digress.
Anyway, here I am. Tanned, rested and ready -- your recherché raconteur.
Blog On!
I was worried ***I*** was gonna have to pick up the slack and start writing Scourges. Wouldna' ha' been priddy.
Posted by: Scott Chaffin at 11:57 PM