Hiatus

Moved to top of page

Lately, I've been consumed by a new client's transaction. The global, four time-zone deal demanded constant conference calls; London leaves as Los Angeles awakes. Tomorrow, I fly to 55° 45´ N latitude, 37° 42´ E longitude. I'm stuck 'till the solstice, the shortest day of the year--less than seven daylight hours. The remaining 17 are reserved for checking contracts and scrutinizing Schedules. A few days later, I'll advise the client to hold his nose while signing, and stash some cash for bail.

Returning late next week, vacation starts the next day. I do love Christmas: saturated TV commercials for diamonds and Black & Decker's last-minute gift du jour (2004: Auto Tape), tacking-on tinsel 'til the tree's albedo tops 0.9 (take that, global warming!), atheists insisting they're after off-key carols, not Christmas, the annual ACLU passion play, also known as "pin the law-suit on the symbol," and the Arab world's end-of-the-year assault on "the obscenity of Christmas"--who can forget the Religion of Peace's 2004 smash hit, baby Jesus caused the Tsunami?

Which is why Christmas became an away game. And--call me a traditionalist--but it wouldn't be December 25th without warm cloudless skies; shaded by a palm frond palapa; headphones piping Arvo Pärt or Eñya, Tom Paxton or Tchaikovsky; 2,500 pages of history books to my right; a mixture of fruit and CH₃CH₂OH surrounded by SiO₂ in my left hand. Advantage: tropics!--24 hours is plenty for packing.

My present project stunted sleep, restricting blog bandwidth between the two "surrenders": from Harriet to the Democrats. And neither bandwidth-challenged iceboxes nor sun-blind beaches are blogger friendly. Which is a long-winded way of saying "Blogging will be light to non-existent until New Years."

Merry Christmas and "Más Piña" to all.