... To let you know that yes, indeed, I'm still alive.

I haven't moved from this chair in about a week and a half, so my behind is sore and my eyes are bleary and my hand is all cramped up from gripping and obsessively clicking the mouse to watch yet another South African television show, but I'm alive.

(Please don't look so openly disappointed.)

And I AM still working on my travelogue. That is, if you can define adding approximately one word a day to it as "working on it."

Okay, but at least I'm feeling guilty about still not having it completed. And besides, I'm being put to even further shame by her. She went on her trip about a month after I returned from mine, and she's already shared most of her travel tales with us. (Go read it. It's irresistible: Filled with sheep and castles and rabbit doo.)

Luckily you've come to expect nothing more of me! I'm sooo glad that my bad blogging habits and my terrible writing skills have come to be so useful!

So all ye younge bloggers oute there, here is some free, unsolicited advice (but be grateful, young brats. I could emulate my immigration lawyer and charge you a few thousand dollars for it anyway, unsolicited or not! What? I sound bitter you say? Me? NEVER!)... Anyway, where were we?

Oh yes. Unsolicited advice to the young'uns: If you are planning to be the Second Laziest Blogger Ever (sorry, slot of the laziest is already, leisurely, filled by me), then by George! Do NOT write on your blog every day! If you do (and even if you do it badly with lots of overused parentheses (or even parentheses WITHIN parentheses!)), your three readers will come to expect having something new to read every day when they come to your blog, and with every new ping, they'll start salivating like Pavlov's dogs so famously did whenever they heard his bell ring, and then, when the pings stop coming one day, they will revolt and start spamming you with e-mails to see where you are and then they will eat each other and it will be ALL YOUR FAULT for setting such high standards (like blogging every day) in the first place!

But if you do it correctly by being a bad blogger from the beginning, then no one will notice if you don't blog for seven months, and no one will clog your inbox with concerned e-mails to check on your well-being. (Trust me, you don't want that. Really. It may SOUND pleasant, but think about it: Receiving and then having to open e-mails and... such horror... READING it is just SO strenuous! Especially if you could be doing something productive, like taking a nap.)

Instead, the people will see that you've updated your blog for the second time in a year and show only mild interest. "Oh, yeah. Whats-her/his-name has updated. I wonder what they sai... Oh, LOOK! A ping from one of the EAGER EVERY DAY BLOGGERS!"

And clickety-click, just like that they'll navigate away from your blog and leave you to fester away in a dark, unnoticed corner of the internet, the corner where all ignored, neglected, dying or dead sites end up... The World Wide Cobweb...