On How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Well, after over a full year of silence, the day you've all been eagerly awaiting on the tenterhooks of rabid anticipation has finally arrived. Me, your favorite Inkler, has reemerged from utter anonymity to the relative anonymity of a blog read by about 3 people back when I was posting regularly. (yes, please do cue gratuitous picture of a cat. This is the Internet, right?)

On the other hand, that cat may be launching at a face, a very human face, with claws extended. Let that haunt your dreams.

Perhaps an explanation is in order: when I started this blog, I had very real intentions of updating it at least once a week, on issues of faith, art, and general human living, all the while trying to actually make it worth reading. That went on for a bit (maybe other than the "worth reading it" bit - the jury's still out on that) & the reason was very simple: I was working a rather mindless job in an office so low-level that the company had about 8 people working for it, only 1 of whom had his own office. Two others shared an office, and the rest of us were in a room with desks in various corners without any sort of dividers. I answered phones and did data entry. I did that for a year while I was finishing my MA in theology, and was then - fortuitously - able to get a job teaching Theology at a Catholic school.

Note: Not what I look like.

While I'd been sitting at the desk bleeding my eyes out and doing what certainly felt like something bordering on an invasion of privacy, it'd been fairly easy to keep this blog going. When the phone wasn't ringing & I had some down time between looking up & compiling personal (and yet nevertheless public, mind you) information about people all over the country, I'd write a bit & try to keep my brain from melting out of my head. 

Oh, no, please do go on about what you had for lunch, ma'am!

So yes, I wrote while on the clock, which isn't, strictly speaking, the right thing to do. But there it is. Once I started teaching, nearly all of my brainpower and energy was suddenly and un-apologetically sucked down the drain of the perils of high school.

Theeeeen I figured I'd start posting again this summer, once I had time to actually think like a human being again. I even wrote a list of topics to address when I finally got my fingers back on the keyboard. Instead, I went on a 9,000+ mile road trip!

Starting in the City of Dreams (Cleveland, obviously), I drove to Columbus to Pittsburgh to Cape Cod for a week and a half to Philadelphia to Gettysburg (totally awesome) to Andersonville (Confederate POW camp in GA where a relative of mine died) to Milledgeville (home of one of my favorite authors, Flannery O'Connor) to New Orleans to Austin to Alamosa, CO to Ouray, CO for a month to Lincoln to Minneapolis and on back to the City of Awesome. (side note: I just spent about 20 minutes trying to draw a map of my trip on Google Maps for a visual for you. Let's just say that I got bored and started throwing stuff at people).

The graphic would have gone here. Ehn... maybe if I was getting paid for this.

Okay, now I'm just boring myself. The point is, I am returning with a long list things to blog about, so I should have plenty of material for a while. Second year teaching is easier than first year, right? ... right?

Peace out.