Mea culpa! I have been sorely remiss in blogging for the past while. It's not that nothing much has been happening, but more that I've been stressed to the max. Eye-twitchingly stressed even and have had barely the ability to think straight let alone put together a coherent thought or two for a blog entry. So what have I been up to for the past few months? Well, work of course, stressing out in a major way, adjusting to a new normal in my personal life and then finally relief in the form of summer holidays. I took two weeks off (and am now in the middle of week 2) and did a road trip for a few days to Kittery, Maine with my daughter. August means slowly thinking about back-to-school stuff and Kittery is the outlet mall mecca of Maine. Heh, we actually ended up coming home a day early as we hit the limit on goods to bring back duty free, plus the forecast was calling for rain the next day so we took advantage of the clear day to make the drive home. Saint John to Kittery is about a 6 hour drive but the border crossing adds an hour and a half in wait time. Bring a book or crank your tunes because there's no speeding up the lineup. Going back into Canada was not so bad - maybe 40 minutes or so. We lucked out with some awesome weather, hot and sunny, so got some beach time in and lots of swimming in the outdoor pool at our hotel. The outlet malls were literally across the street from where we were staying and well within walking distance. We also did a quick jaunt over to the Fox Run Mall in Newington, New Hampshire - land of no sales tax :-) I even briefly considered driving the extra hour down to Cambridge, MA just to visit the Apple Store in the Cambridge Mall - yes I know, it is an illness. Nevertheless, we're now back and while I am feeling much more relaxed I could seriously use a month off at least. Ah, well, since that's not going to happen this'll have to be as good as it gets. I do hope to be blogging more frequently from now on. Maybe I'll try doing up a publication schedule and hope it keeps me on track.