Absent

“Hey, where have you been?” The question was shouted at me from across the coffee house, and resounded about the place like a sledgehammer striking steel.

I looked around, slightly stunned. “Um, adding cream?” I looked around, trying to figure out who in the hell was yelling at me.

“No, I mean lately….” The voice was closer now, causing my eyes to vibrate in their sockets.

“Oh, I’m heading back to work after lunch….”

The sun disappeared as a planet of a man appeared in front of me. I realize that some people qualify as scary big. This guy was like two spots past that. “No,” he said, sounding as if he was speaking to someone fresh off the short bus, “I mean your blog. You have that house fixin’ blog, right? Damn, you need to write on that some more. That was some funny shit.”

“Yeah, thanks, I’ll do that I guess.” Time to run for the door.

“Great! Nice to see you again Tom!”

“Nice to see you as well, man!” Just like that, I was free. I was back on the sidewalks of Astoria, returning to anonymity.

Now, no offense to the linebacker in question, but I still have no idea who in the hell that guy was. I was a bit freaked out, but I quickly got over it, and following an afternoon of furious bit-twiddling promptly forgot about it.

A couple of days later, I was walking about with arms full of various network components when I came across Wend-E. Amongst other things, she pointed out that I have not updated in a while.

I started to detect a pattern.

I came home and my lovely bride tells me that Auntie L and Guy are both kvetching (my words) about my lack of posts.

Well, crap.

I’ve been, you know, busy, in a “kind of” sort of way. Sequestered may be an even better term. I’ve been taking entirely too long to finish things around the house. I’ve been busy being Dad and Hubby. I've been decompressing. I've been uncoiling.

So, I’m flattered, and I’ll be better. I’ll get back to this. Really.