Excuses, Excuses

Is there anything worse than a flat tire?  Especially when you're on a bicycle, going full speed down a twisty turny mountain road?

Well, that's kind of what happened to my blog.  I was coasting along, posting regularly, and then BAM!  Flat tire. 

I don't need to tell my loyal and faithful readers that I haven't blogged much lately.  They have TOLD ME!  

But I have an excuse.  A couple of them, actually.

First, we just completed our 19th (and dare I say "final"?) move in conjunction with my husband's naval career.  So just like the Beverly Hillbillies, we loaded up our truck and moved.  Our household goods weighed in at just under 18,000 pounds.  The box count alone was close to 200.  That's a lot of stuff to schlep.  Not to mention, unpack.  It's also a lot of stuff to cram into a house half the size of our previous abode.  So we are also downsizing (thank goodness for Craig's List!)  But as of last Friday, we have officially opened and either unpacked or relegated to the garage for sale/disposal, our last box of stuff. 

And as if we didn't have enough to keep us busy, we also bought our first "new" (27-year-old) sailboat.  That involved a lot of boat shopping all over the tidewater area.  And trips to the boat stores.  And work on the boat.  What it hasn't involved, though, is any sailing.  In one of those wildly ironic realities of life, our first week as sailboat owners when we were both off work and had time available to be frittered, it was TOO WINDY TO SAIL!  So our time onboard--to include a lovely picnic--has been spent tied to the pier.  No worries, though.  I'm sure you will hear a lot about our adventures on the high seas in future posts. (FYI, the picture is representative of our boat tied to the pier.  The honset to goodness truth is I don't have a picture of our new old boat yet.  I'll add that to my To Do list for this week!) 

But the final event that pushed me over the edge (and out of the blogo-sphere) was that Blogger changed the dashboard.  Every function has a new look, and the usual functions are now hidden under cute (and probably obvious to teckie-types) icons.  This all happened in early May, after I had been blogging for a year and had finally figured out the nuances and could post with ease and confidence.  This is all new tricky stuff and I am one of those very old dogs.  So please bear with me as I redesign my blog and get back into a rhythm. 

In the meantime, I did manage to participate in the Avalon Authors Round Robin writing challenge, where each author writes one chapter.  We didn't have any prearranged plot or anything even remotely resembling an outline.  We didn't even constrict ourselves to one genre, so it's a romance and mystery mashed together.  Each author writes enough to carry it through the next plot point, then sends it along to the next author on the list to put their own "spin" or "flavor" on it. We're up to Chapter 11 now and it's great fun to read.  A new chapter posts every other Monday.  The title:  ALONG FOR THE RIDE.  You can read it by clicking here.  Look for me, I'm Chapter Eight.

Right now I'm off to organize my new pantry (I said everything was unpacked, I didn't say everything was organized. There's a HUGE difference!)  I'll be back blogging soon, I promise.