Hello, world

Sorry for my long, unexplained absence. I've been sick for the last two weeks. Very sick, with I don't know what, perhaps the flu. In any event, I haven't been up to much beyond contributing to the world's mucus production.

Being ill is kind of like living on a remote island with no amenities. You spend your days trying to coax food out of an uncompromising rocky patch of land and hauling water to a few head of undernourished sheep. You get the news of the world once a week when the mail boat arrives, but it's already over a week old and it really has no connection with your existence.

Actually, I've been feeling kind of out of it since I left for California three weeks ago. I left the day of Bush's last State of the Union speech and by the time I was settled into my hotel room even the postmortems were over. I'd already been locked out of my blog and my email for several days and I had no time before my interview the next day to peruse my complementary copy of USA Today.

I reconnected with the world briefly on Wednesday and Thursday at an Internet cafe a few blocks from my sister's apartment in San Francisco, but by that time I was completely behind on my paid work so I spent my time researching romantic places to vacation, celebrity real estate investors and over-the-top celebrity weddings. (See also 14 most romantic movies.)

I spent that Friday flying back, returning on Saturday at 1:30 am. Saturday and Sunday were spent finishing up already late assignments. Monday doing errands. Tuesday I found out I didn't get the California job and Wednesday I came down with the plague.

So you're all caught up.