This has been an interesting week. I used all of last week as vacation. Pam and I haven’t actually taken a vacation together–just the two of us, without other family–for probably five years. We didn’t do that last week either, but we did have the week to ourselves, in a way. Allen, Carolyn, and Connor took a quick trip to Florida, so we were left with the house to ourselves for the first time in seven months. Kinda forgot what that was like. Nice.

I’ve been using most of my vacation time, for several years, doing freelance work. So it’s not really vacation. I decided that I was going to do only minimal freelance work, and otherwise spend the week doing stuff that I wanted to do, no matter how frivolous. I did spend a few hours Wednesday redesigning some pages on my RandomPokes.com site, but when I began the process of uploading them, the computer froze up, and I’ve not been able to get back into that drive. Has me a bit worried; maybe it crashed and can’t be recovered. But at the same time, I haven’t spent time trying to fix it. Rather, I’ve pretty much been taking a break from the computer world. And that, too, is nice. Beginning tomorrow, I’ll see if I can resurrect our main computer. Doing so this week would have felt too much like, well, work.

On Thursday I tried fixing up Pam’s laundry room in the basement by adding a bunch of shelving on both sides of the room. Made two trips to Lowes for supplies, and got most of it done before Pam came home from work. In between, I took myself to the Flattop Grill for lunch (I like it, but Pam doesn’t). Then went to Barnes Noble for a bit (I can kill an infinite number of hours in bookstores).

Pam took Friday off. We ate breakfast with my parents, who just returned from a cross-country trip to Washington State, and then we did a bunch of work around the house. Yesterday I finished making my garage all spic and span. The place looks neat and clean now.

So it’s been an enjoyable week.

Last night presented somewhat of a crisis. Allen and Carolyn, on their way back from Florida, got stuck in Ringgold, Georgia. Transmission went out. Carolyn’s aunt came down from Knoxville to pick them up, getting there around midnight. I helped Allen arrange to have their car towed to Knoxville. Just talked to Allen. He thinks the car is running okay, and they plan to head back tomorrow morning. We’re praying they make it just fine.

So that’s been my week. Or at least, that’s all I’m gonna report in this particular post.

My name is Steve, and it’s been 11 days since my last post.

I do continue to exist within range of the cybersphere. But we had this big denominational convention, which turned out being wildly successful. Being on the planning committee, as well as on staff with our denomination, I was fully engulfed in the thing. The weeks leading up to the event were insanely hectic, though the event itself, for me, was only bedlam hectic. The thing ended last Sunday.

This past week, I’ve managed to completely wind down. In fact, all traces of ambition have seemingly been sucked out of me. Including the desire to jump back into the blog game. But here I am, 11:30 at night, typing away, trying to produce something of value to those disappointed souls who frequent this thing, and for nearly two weeks have found nothing of value. Well, finding nothing of value is not an unusual occurrance. But finding nothing, period, is not so usual.

I blog, therefore I exist.

Here are some random pokings squeezed from the recesses of my cranium.

• I finished James Patterson’s Judge and Jury. That was a very good book. Not as good as his Alex Cross novels, but certainly a heck of a fun read.
• I put up some extra shelves in my garage this weekend. Being a pathetically inept handyman, accomplishments like this give me extraordinary satisfaction.
• Conner likes to pull my beard. He was doing it tonight. Fortunately, it’s not very long and he can’t get a good grip.
• Spurs in five. But I’m not happy about it. And for the record, I’m still pouting about the cosmic injustice inflicted on the Phoenix Suns.

Okay, that’s all I’ve got.