The worst part about taking a *vacation* from writing -- especially when you're writing something as intimate and as demanding as a daily Internet journal -- is how quickly you unplug from the process. After a couple of days away from the keyboard, you begin to lose some of that connection between the life you're living and the story you're telling online. Life goes back to being life again, not 'anecdotal material.' Conversations are conversations, not filler. People are people, not characters. You stop looking at everything you say/do/eat/dream/excrete as potential plot development.

(Of course, this is also the best part about taking a *vacation* from writing.)

I'm still on hiatus. Basically I'm just interrupting the hiatus to tell you that the hiatus is still going on. Also to tell you that I'm fine, and that I miss the writing part of the process, and that I miss hearing from all of you, and that I do plan to return to it as soon as I can.

It won't be right away, however. In one of those peculiar little ironies that seem to define my life, this is the week that our ancient home computer has suddenly gone belly-up. We have no idea what's wrong with it -- and we'll probably spend the better part of the weekend trying to resuscitate the beast -- but in the meantime SecraTerri and Ю僱êrvØ¡ are temporarily offline. As it is, I'm not at all sure that I'm going to be able to upload this little bit of a journal update after I write it. Everything on our computer is crawling at the speed of mud: it took almost twenty minutes just to boot up and establish an iffy dial-up connection.

"Imagine how much worse this would be if I weren't on hiatus," I said to David. Meaning, Imagine how stressful things would be around The Castle this week if I were trying to keep *FootNotes* afloat while our computer throws its stoopid little hissy fit.

David shuddered. Some things, apparently, are just too terrible to contemplate.

See everybody in a few days.