No one blogs anymore

The public has called, and I'm here to answer...

After much begging, a fair bit of cajoling, and a dash of threatening, I have returned dear readers!

Unfortunately, I've nothing more to say than I ever did, but at least I can continue to say it here for you.

The trouble is: what to say? It's dangerous to talk about work, inadvisable to talk about friends and family, inappropriate to talk about lovers, and trite to talk about oneself. So, where does that leave me? I guess it leaves me to talk about total strangers.

I have been going on regular evening runs with a friend along an OC beach boardwalk. It is amazing to me how many people leave their blinds facing the ocean wide open. The boardwalk is totally public and easily accessible. It has become a guilty pleasure to sneak a slightly blurred peek as I whiz by each sliding glass door. OK, swish by. Ok, slog by.

A few things I've seen surprise me not at all. Lavishly furnished multi-floor townhouses. Tiny, run-down summer rentals. Condos packed with surfer kids sharing overstuffed bedrooms.

However, I see some things that are very interesting to me. First, that almost every place has a TV on, and most of them are flat screen plasma-style. Second, when American Idol is on, EVERY TV is watching it. One can watch the muted show through windows in a bizarre sort of flipbook fashion as you run past. The Nielsen folks don't need to do mail-in surveys or surreptitiously log TiVo selections. All they need to do is send someone on a Segway down the boardwalk during primetime.

In fact, I may have seen just that last week, when I passed a Segway in transit along the boardwalk. Of course, that may also have been someone working on the movie they were filming that night. Only in so Cal can a person have to dodge a film crew and lights as bright as the sun when going for an evening run. We didn't even get a celebrity sighting out of the deal.

Well, I managed to fill up an entry talking about absolutely nothing. Hopefully, I'll come up with something more fun for next time, if I can manage another next time before 6 more months have passed by.