Back from a needed respite from everyday life. I look ten years younger due to the unintended but happy circumstance of being on the receiving end of a dermabrasion from the wind-driven sand. While I enjoy a brief jaunt to the beach, in reality, on a sustained basis, wind and and sand are not elements that I willingly embrace in the long term.

Mark and I survived the onslaught of overly excited canines who did not quite know what to make of our absence but quite what to do in the enthusiastically greeting our return. I've a broken dishwasher (and it is less than 5 years old). It is a double drawer Fischer Paytel. With two independent drawers, you have double the trouble. And I do have double trouble, to be sure. I have no plans to spend another $600 on this machine to get it fixed. I think that I'm going to get a Miele.

Though I've not reached crackberry status, I'm finding my BlackBerry to be very helpful....NOW with my cable out, I'm hooked up. I see MarkM has noted from Barry R's blog an article in the New Yorker on Armstrong...you can read it here.