Vacation, all I ever wanted
Vacation, had to get away
The Go-Go’s — "Vacation"

I know that blogging has been sparse of late — oh who are we kidding, it's been non-existent — but with good reason. It's been far too long since I've had a vacation. I mean, I've had vacation days where I took time off from work and did little or nothing. And every year I use some time to volunteer my services for a large international equestrian three-day event but that hardly ends up being relaxing. No, I'm talking about just kicking back and blocking out the [……]

Oh - by the way - the new job brings with it a new phone number. In fact, the entire family has changed numbers. So if you have a phone number for me, it will cease to work at some point in the very near future. To get the new one, please email me (assuming you have my email address) and I'll send you the new number. If that's not possible, submit a comment to this post and I'll figure out a way to get it to you.

Goodness me, my lovely readers, it's been way too long since I actually updated this thing. So here's what's been going on since we last shared this little time together...

Shortly after my last post, I was told that I'd be out of a job (along with my boss - and friend - Mr. Moose) as of August 31. Basically, the services that our jobs performed were being farmed out. So, for the second time in my life, I was asked to assist in eliminating my own job. Hopefully you'll never have to go through that but, if you do, just [……]

For whatever reason, I've started playing with Twitter. I'm still not sure why.

No - that's not entirely true. It started out with the thought that it might be an interesting way to keep folks informed about what my business is doing. So I set up an account under my company name. Then I figured I might as well set one up for personal stuff too. Why not, huh?

So if you're among the Twitter-inclined (and have any desire to do so), you can follow me at http://twitter.com/lorenlang. And if you want to follow developments at [……]

Apple announced the other day that it would only accept credit cards at it's stores for iPhones. Plus, they are limiting purchases to two. And now, having apparently seen the loophole in this stunningly stupid and short-sighted policy, they refuse to accept their own gift cards for them as well.

They're saying that this is to, oh what was the phrase, "discourage unauthorized resellers." Which means they don't want people to buy some and sell them on eBay (a perfectly legal endeavor, btw) and they certainly don't want you unlocking the [……]

Know anybody looking for a lovely, custom built home on a quiet road in the country in Central Kentucky but close enough to 2 larger cities to make it easy to do what needs to be done? Point them here.

We built this house and had planned to be in it until we were dragged out by the feet, but Life® happened and our cash flow priorities had to change. Thus, we have to sell it.

It's a really nice house. Lots of upgrades. Come see it. Buy it. Tell me you read about it here [……]

Wow - It seems like forever since I've written anything on the site. A couple of things have conspired against me in this. Namely, (1) my jack-booted, corporate network thugs cracked down on internet access and are monitoring (and screaming loudly about) access to non-work related sites and (2) after sitting at a keyboard all day long, the last thing I want to do when I get home is sit in front of another one for the evening, especially when the best connection I can usually get is around 21600 bps. Oy.

The network monitoring has only curtailed [……]

Such was my stream of consciousness this morning on my way to work.

This morning I walked outside and prepared to come to work. As I breathed in the cool, crisp morning, my mind was lost in the beauty of what I saw around me. The sun was just peeking out along the tops of the trees and there was still a slight dimness to it all. A mist hung above some of the pastures - just enough to make it's presence known but not to be intrusive. The horses stood as not-quite-silhouettes against it's blurred background. I said a quick [……]

Well - it was an enjoyable time. I didn't know it was possible for something to be relaxing and exhausting at the same time.

Having said our goodbyes Saturday night, we woke up early yesterday morning and went back to Gulf Shores to hit the beach. This time the wind was up just a bit and the surf was quite a bit bigger than it had been a couple days before when we were there. I'm glad the Things got to see some decent waves. There were some folks out bodyboarding as well, looking like they were having a great time. [……]

Today was going to be our last day here so we headed back over to Gulf Shores to do a little shopping, have some beach time and do some touristy type stuff. Plans changed a bit, but it was a good day.

It was mid-morning by the time we got to the main road heading down to the Gulf. We had 3:00 reservations for a glass-bottomed boat dolphin cruise and so we decided to kill some time. We spent a couple hours playing miniature golf and then went looking for lunch.

During lunch, SWMBO saw that she had a [……]