Good morning! I'm sorry that I've been so out of the loop lately. With the computer going down and the holidays coming soon thereafter, it's been hard for me to get back on track.

Yesterday I had my first ever facial. I have the same recommendation for a facial that I have for visiting New Orleans...everyone should do it at least once. It's a completely self-indulgent, incomparable experience, just like New Orleans. Except that you feel fantastic when it's over...the antithesis of the New Orleans experience.

When I entered Serendipity Day Spa, I was lead to a changing room where I was instructed to take off my shoes and to change from my shirt into a towel that wrapped around me just below my armpits and fastened in the front with velcro. Then I was asked to complete a questionnaire about my skin. While I reclined on a chaise lounge, noting whether I used sunscreen daily or experienced flakiness, soft music played in the background in tandem with the indoor waterfall in the corner of the room. When I'd finished, Amy the facial maestro, entered and asked me to follow her to the next room. Amy appeared to be in her mid-20s. She had a very sweet countenance and one of those really soft voices...like a kindergarten teacher.

Once in the room, she softly suggested I take off my Liz Claiborne slippers and lie down on what looked to be a gurney topped with a three inch thick mattress pad and luxurious down bedding. It was very dimly lit with the same soft music and waterfall sounds from the last room. When I got in and covered up, I noticed that the bed itself seemed very slightly warmed. I laid back and closed my eyes. For the next 90 minutes, my face was cleaned, stripped, massaged and moisturized with nary a word spoken. The soft music, the aroma of the different products, the warmth of the bed, the massage, felt almost like a meditation. It was relaxation deeper than sleep. Strangely, I never felt weird like I often do during a pedicure...where I have to hold back my apologies for coming in and asking the pedicurist to paint my sad little toenails. When we finished, I was escorted to a third room with a huge, Hollywood-like makeup mirror with shelf upon shelf of Bare Escentials and MD facial products. I was treated to a full makeover, the likes of which I'd never experienced. Afterward I looked and felt like I was going to the Academy Awards...all shined and polished and feeling fabulous.

When I returned home, I was all dressed up with nowhere to go. I sat down and folded laundry and thought about Nicole Kidman. I wondered if she ever felt slightly deflated after all the primping and relaxation only to go home and sit around watching Presumed Innocent.

Namaste

Guess who's 'oudt?'

Poor little Steve with his slow and labored speech and wicked sense of humor. He was great entertainment for the season.

OMG! I'm BACK! It's been so very long. It's so surreal to actually be typing at home.

I guess it's best to begin at the beginning...three weeks ago. It was early on a Sunday morning, and the computer had been cranking along, acting sorta weird, but generally just being it's geriatric self. I decided to do a little house cleaning by deleting some files...you know, just your usual crap when you're trying to ignore dirty dishes and clean clothes piled to the ceiling on the dryer and pretend you're not actually going to surf the internet...just do a little much needed maintenance...

OPERATING SYSTEM ERROR

These are words you never want to see. I probably shouldn't even be TYPING them. As a matter of fact, stop reading them NOW.

THOSE words flashed around, and the screen went blank.

Remember the Sex and the City episode with the "Sad MAC...Sad MAC?" And then dumba$$ Aiden did the control+alt+delete to wipe out everything on Carrie's hard drive? That's pretty much how it went over here, except I was dumba$$ Aiden AND Carrie (OK, my daughter was an innocent in all this, she might be Carrie).

When it happened, I did all sort of crazy crap...restart, restart, restart. I couldn't actually reBOOT, as Windows wouldn't even give me a wink. I was out in the cold dark world of blank black screen with the occasional hopeful glimmer of blank blue screen. Staring, staring, staring. Thinking, thinking, thinking. More staring.

I scrounged around in the decrepit funeral home computer desk and in some freakish alignment of the stars FOUND the operating system disk. "Damn, I am GOOD," I smirked at the blank black screen.

Insert disk.

Restart.

Random commands.

Then the computer became Hal and started yelling at me to do this and do that and asking me funky questions about where everything was...all in that depressing MS DOS mode, like I wasn't already depressed enough that I have to stare at these no-font lines of crap telling me to type in some crazy prompt.

"If you're so freaking smart, YOU type the damned command you MF-ing #*%^@*# computer!!"

Computers can be such ill-mannered creeps sometimes. They act so proud of themselves with their fancy backslashes and blabbering on about C drives and their evil return key BEEP. Even when they're sick and dying, they're total bitches.

So, what did I do at that point? I went into the bedroom, woke up my daughter, gave her the sad news and...I cannot believe I'm telling you this...cried. Tears started flowing out completely unrestrained. Suddenly, everything that was wrong in my life (my sad love life, depressing finances, the fact that I missed the last episode of Project Runway) all came to settle upon the shoulders of this now expired computer.

We scrambled around and got this 1990s band-aid for a couple of weeks (don't even ask), and then...incredibly...this man came to our rescue. Can you believe it? He's a geologist, yoga teacher AND computer whiz. (I couldn't make this stuff up, people!)

Anyway, I just wanted to give a big shout out to Tim for helping me to get cranked up to posting again. BTW, if you're interested, True North Yoga is sponsoring an Introduction to Power Flow Yoga class Saturday, December 15 starting at 9 a.m. There are just a few openings left for the class. Check out www.truenorthyoga.com for more info.

Namaste!

One Kentucky Writer has tagged me, and although I am not yet up to full capacity (friends are working on my computer problem), I do have a small window of opportunity to post while out of town. Here's the skinny:

Link to the tagger and post these rules on your blog. Share five facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird. Tag five people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

1. Just a few years back, a very good friend of mine called me and then boyfriend "O Canada" to the front lines. To this day it remains one of the most exhilarating jobs I've ever held: running the spotlight for Lou Rawls. We stood on a platform directly behind Lou's sound and light guy who shouted orders at us through some funky 1970s headphones. I had no concept of the light's actual power. Up to that point, I had been impressed by the 100 watt bulb. I completely blinded Lou upon his big stage entrance. As he waved his free, unmicrophoned hand over his eyes in a surrendering motion and the sound/light guy screamed "BACK OFF OF LOU! BACK OFF OF LOU!," I struggled to regain my composure enough to find dim. When I did, without hesitating, Lou launched into "You'll never find..." The rest is Paducah Riverfront history.
2. In the early 1990s I lived in a funeral home.
3. Sometimes if I hear an unusual word, I will type the word in my head over and over. I imagine my hands on the keys, the keystrokes, spelling. Sometimes without realizing it, my fingers will be moving. This has been going on since my eighth grade typing class. I guess it serves a purpose as my spelling is slightly above average.
4. When I was growing up I wanted to be a cowgirl, veterinarian, television journalist (in that order). Then I graduated high school and had no idea.
5. My life's dream is to visit Alaska.

I'm tagging Joy.

Namaste