I’m back

I’m finally home from my vacation and I don’t think I’ll be taking another one any time soon. It figures that the one week I’m away from my broadband Internet connection, my mailbox gets slammed by the So Big worm. My computer didn’t get infected but it seems like every one who did ended up sending me emails. I had over 1,000 of those virus emails last week, and that’s not including the normal spam or my regular messages! And I had only a dial up connection to work with. As a result, my mailbox kept filling up and legitimate emails started bouncing back to their senders, so if you sent me email in the past week and it bounced back, please try again.

Anyway, I had a great time. Most of the week was spent at my sister Francesca’s house in Maine, where I spent the time playing with sister Evelyn’s two girls and my brother Bernie’s daughter Mary (they were also there on vacation) or swimming in her pool. As I said in a previous blog, I went horseback riding with Mary on one day. We also went up to L.L. Bean’s store in Freeport late one night, did some shoppng in Portland another day, and for three days we went to Acadia National Park. I finally finished “Courage to be Catholic” by George Weigel (I don’t know why it took me so long), and started “Master and Commander” by Patrick O’Brian. So far it’s great. If you even think you might like a book about the British Navy at the height of its glory at the beginning of the 19th century, then you should pick it up. One of the best features of the book is a schematic of the sails of a typical British man-of-war of the time so I can tell what the heck they’re talking about. Oh, and plenty of EA Sports MVP Baseball 2003 on my brother-in-law Pete’s Playstation 2 that he brought with him. It’s a fun little diversion and we’re very competitive about it.

The weirdest moment: I was standing on rocks on the water’s edge in Acadia taking a picture when I was hit in the back of the head by something. I look up and see a sea gull flying past. No, it’s not what you think: He hit me in the head with his wing! What’s up with that?

Scariest moment: We were sitting around the campfire one night, when we heard my mom’s small dog whimper loudly a couple of times. Francesca reaches down and pulls him out of his cage next to my mom and he’s completely limp and lifeless. She shakes him a few times and he eventually springs back to life. Near as we can tell, he got wrapped up in his leash and nearly suffocated himself. Do dogs have nine lives?

Anyway, it was a very good time, we had fantastic weather, and I’m sad to see it end. On the other hand, it’s nice to be sleeping in my own bed again, to have fast access to the Internet, and to be writing again.

I’ll try to get up to speed soon with the blog, but it may take a day or two as I deal with the backlog of other stuff sitting on my computer and desk.