I can explain.

Well, hi there.

Yeah, I know. It's been awhile. But you won't believe what happened.

My dog ate my blog post. No. Not dogs, bears. Kodiak bears. On unicycles. Kodiak bears on unicycles ate my blog post.

Aliens stole my laptop.

I got my hand stuck down the kitchen sink drain and have been pinned inside my apartment. I survived on the bag of melty chocolate chips I'd left on the counter.

I was invited last-minute to cover the Olympics in Beijing, went over to check out the scene, got the black lung, and came home.

Really.

Okay, not really. What actually happened was the following:

I decided to write a script. Fast. I discovered the June 30 deadline for the NBC Writers on the Verge program and decided to stop stalling, write a spec script, and apply, no matter what. And then I did what any resourceful writer would: I scrapped what I already had and started from scratch. One week to outline, another to write, and I sent it off just about the time I was getting ready to pull my own hair out one strand at a time. What I submitted wasn't perfect, but I'm proud of it anyway; it's out for review with a couple of trusted writer-friends, and now I can catch the next deadline (August 8, the holy grail ABC/Disney) as it comes. All hail the power of a good deadline, right?

And then--well, not so much "then" as "meanwhile"--I decided to take a class. Something about the NPR mention invaded my brain, and I found a Writing Comedy for TV class at MediaBistro and signed up. We have lectures, meet online once a week for class chat, and--here's the fun part--there's homework. Assigned Thursday, due Saturday, fifty jokes. Every week. Let me say that although joke-writing is fun(-ish) and satisfying, fifty jokes is a lot of jokes. In case you were wondering.

And then--this is where the bears on unicycles come in--I went on vacation. Kind of. I took a week off of work and didn't go anywhere. Instead, my college roommate and freakishly close friend Al flew down from Seattle and we held a contest to see how many parts of Northern California we could see in nine days (bonus points for Nevada!). I think we did okay: we kayaked on Lake Tahoe; came out $15 and $0.75 ahead, respectively, in Reno; got caught in crazy fog on Golden Gate Bridge when the ENTIRE rest of the Bay was bathed in sunshine; played pirate mini-golf at the boardwalk in Santa Cruz; hit the Napa outlets; and watched most of the first season of Heroes, among other things. Not bad. A good time was had by all. But you see, not much time for posting. You'll have to excuse me.

Things are getting back to normal this week. My apartment is slowly recovering (complete solitude and complete sociability are equally destructive to my ability to clean up after myself, apparently). I'd forgotten what it was like to read at home, and go out once in awhile, and be a little bit aimless, and have it be okay. I'm eating fruits and vegetables and meat again (Al subsists entirely on cheese and white foods). Apparently there's TV out there besides 30 Rock, and I don't have to feel guilty for watching it? I'm learning. And I'm back.

Hello.