I admit it, I've fallen into not only the Pit of Intermittent Blogging, but the Snake River Canyon of Disaffection With My Own Prose and the Olduvai Gorge of Ever-Widening Indifference.
Enough metaphors for you? I should hope to hell so.
Anyway, I've done my best to keep this blog alive with the faintest of pulse during the past few weeks. A new banner here. A small photo blog posting there.
Much of my absence can be explained by the fact I was working like a fiend, but also because of external factors here at La Maison du Salade. Suffice to say that life has not been anything akin to a box of chocolates. More like a box of cat turds, really, broken only by the intermittent big honkin' pickup truck, the warmth of family holiday gatherings, the occasional illicit cigar and the infrequent but always welcome belly full of Sambuca.
I was, however comforted by the correspondence from those near to me, who insisted on sending me everything from the vile to the silly.
*Katherine sent along this link to a site that interprets your mouse movements as waves. "Fun with programming,'' she writes. More like a simulated ecstacy high, if you ask me. Or so I've heard.
*My goddaughter Domonique, a struggling actress loose in the wilds of New York City, wrote on Christmas Day that:
Today I'm with my best friend and her family, including two little kids, one of which is having a tantrum because she wanted to cut her
mother's hair with safety scissors and the mother wouldn't let her.
Last night we piled into a small Toyota with a decorated Christmas tree in the back seat and a dying cat on my lap and drove to their cousin's fancy apartment in Manhattan to see how the other half lives on Christmas Day.
Hey Jeff: The last line is a crackup.
Santa cited for marijuana possession
HIGHLAND PARK, Mich. - A man who visited a middle school dressed as Santa Claus on Thursday left with a citation for misdemeanor marijuana possession.
The 40-year-old Detroit man faces up to 90 days in jail and a $500 fine after a small plastic bag of marijuana was found in the pocket of his street coat, which he left in a school restroom, Wayne County Sheriff's Department officials said.
A deputy who works at the school found the marijuana while searching the coat for identification after a teacher found it in the bathroom. The man dressed as Santa approached the deputy a short time later and identified the coat.
The man denied the pot was his. His wife, who was at the school to take pictures of Santa with the students, apparently did not know the marijuana was in her husband's coat, officials said.
"She was not happy," Lt. Paul Jones said. "It's going to be a long ride back to the North Pole."