Regroup

Yes, I have been AWOL. Yes, I've spent the month vainly trying to put necessary parts of my life in order after a very full season spent everywhere but at home. No excuses though. Summer is over, and soon the decaying leaf and frosty air tang of fall will give everyone a hit of inspiration and the deep breaths of a back-to-work ethic.

I tend to lose touch with my friends in other places a little bit over the summer. Everyone is too busy with end-of-season playoff chases, trips, in-town gatherings (check out the yummy Sicilian meatballs I made for guests on Friday), and weekends of day-drinking to keep up with emailing or writing, except of the postcard variety. I applaud all of these things. But now it feels like it's time to get down to business, in both baseball and blogging. (After all, the Sox' lead in the AL East is a paltry one-and-a-half games.)

After the summer has passed, one's group needs to regroup. In the old days, this meant figuring out what happened to your friend who was arrested in Newport during Tall Ships week or who got kicked out of their summer share for sleeping with someone else's boyfriend. These days, it means getting the latest news on more monumental changes in the lives of the people in my life around the country: weddings, births, and, sadly, even illnesses and deaths, as we get older and our family members do too. Yesterday, I attended my final wedding of the year, my oldest friend gave birth to her first child, and I learned that my grandmother is going into hospice care, covering the big three all too well.

So I'm back--I won't be gone that long again--but I won't pretend to be full of wisdom and insight now that I'm thirty and surrounded by friends and family, so many of whom are experiencing major life changes.

In fact, in some ways I feel younger than ever, if "younger" means having a) more workout clothes than work clothes b) an unhealthy obsession with a movie release date [September 30: Serenity] c) friends who like to punch out hotel nightclerks and other friends who drive drunk across state lines in borrowed jeeps (a.k.a my Saturday night) and d) the type of luck to get kicked out of Nashua, New Hampshire's most amateurish strip club (a.k.a last Thursday). The hiatus is over, but I can make no promises that you'll be getting quality programming or valuable info from here on out. Just a little more me, a little more regularly. Thanks for reading.