OK, so we arrived after an epic drive of about 20 hours, and three stops to cat-nap uncomfortably in a car full of dogs, Christmas gifts and luggage – variously in Lordsburg, someplace about two hours farther west than that, and a rest-stop in the mountains above Tucson. Look, when it’s too cold to sleep, and the air mattress has developed a slow leak and the dog and your child are bogarting most of the available space anyway… well, you may as well drive. Dunno about what rush hour traffic is like in Tucson these days, what with all the new construction, but it’s a breeze at 2AM!

We haven’t killed any Californians yet, we had a nice Christmas and will return with less stuff than we came with, the dogs haven’t fought too much with my parents’ dogs, they think the Weevil is a charmer (except for her chronic tail injury opening up and her painting blood all over the place… thank god for the invention of liquid bandage and lots of paper towels and spray cleaner….) and Spike is as cute and fluffy as ever.

Blondie is spending a couple of days in Pasadena with Pippy and her family, and my youngest brother, I am holding the fort at Mom and Dads – where they still refuse to move into the last quarter of the previous century and venture into the wild uncharted waters of the internet. But they do have a functioning computer, and I am pounding out a couple of reviews and another two or three chapters of the Adelsverein Trilogy, or Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a Lot of Sidearms.

Yes, we’re alive, nothing has blown up in our absence, and I just emptied 3,000 spam comments out of the queue – about par, considering.

Merry Christmas, to everyone but whoever is running the spam comment generator. (You should be tossed out naked in a field of poison ivy and fire ants.)

Sgt. Mom