Don't worry, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. I've been doing everything from teaching art and jewelry classes for some lovely young girls to making custom orders to finishing a research paper to getting stuck in a McDonalds for three hours because the car broke down.

(By the way, I like coffee. I never used to; tea is the thing for me, but I have fallen head over heels in love with coffee. That is, I've fallen head over heels in love with coffee if the coffee is mostly sugar with a lot of whipped cream! The nice Micky D's employees gave me a free iced mocha and it was just so delicious.)

This afternoon I brought the video camera to my favorite corner of our yard and just talked. The cicadas were really loud and I was trying to make myself heard over them-- I'm not raising my voice!

As I explained in the video, I have photos for nearly ten blog posts, but I have not had the opportunity to edit them and get the posts uploaded. It shall happen some day soon, but for right now I'm going to go to the back room and watch some Olympics with my family and work on my Beauty and the Beast research paper during commercials!

I always love the Olympics. Such amazing feats of talent and hard work... Gymnastics is, as always, my favorite. It's quite interesting to watch it with my little sister, who has dedicated hours upon hours to gymnastics training. She's so excited the moment that any of the girls do moves that she knows, and cheers every time Jordyn Wieber or Gabby Douglas comes on the screen. One last thought before I go: the caps that are worn by the water polo guys look like Princess Leia bonnets.

P.S. I had some major problems getting this video uploaded! The video and sound is really, really poor because I was not able to turn the raw footage into a typical format and YouTube apparently hates that. But... like I said... soon... THAT SHALL NO LONGER BE THE CASE! *bounces off walls*

P.P.S. Um... the only thumbnails that YouTube is letting me use are really unflattering. So. I'll just rock it!