Days have gone by and I couldn't be sorrier.

Yes, I've done it again. Disappeared. But now I'm back.

You did realize I was gone, didn’t you? Well. By way of celebrating my Thanksgiving advent, I’m going to filch from the creativity of some fellow bloggers.

Following playwright Patrick Wohlmut’s lead over at his blog, Draining the Locks, I want to say how grateful I am that you’re checking this blog just to check out my latest mental leakage. (Even if Cousin Tabitha did admit to me last night, during the Thanksgiving dessert course, no less, that she skips over the boring parts.) Back in the day (i.e., last year), when this thing was called Mr. Mead’s PuPu Platter as a way of apologizing for its randomness, the blog felt like a message in a bottle. Nowadays it’s part diary, part safety valve – a way to bridge the gap between the luxurious solitude of working at home and the inconvenient need for contact that apparently comes hard-wired into human consciousness.

Originally I was delighted to get any hits. Nowadays they oscillate inexplicably between ... well, let’s just say much more than a few. Which is a thrill for me personally. Never mind that pundits like Arianna get upwards of 10,000 per day.

Of course a dismaying percentage of my hits comes from intergalactic white noise – people or other entities who wind up here inadvertently and depart seconds later, have ascertained that this place is nowhere near where they thought they were going. I’m grateful for youse, too, and – in homage to SMB’s suit over at From Every Corner -- here’s a shout out to a few recent castaways hailing from Cairo, Helsinki, Nordrhein-Westfalen (Germany), Mississauga (Ontario), Hyogo (Japan), Sentjur (Brezovica), Ontario, Essex, Tehran, Toronto, London and Bucharest – not to mention all the mysterious visits from the tireless googlebot. And I’m especially honored by the visits from various corners of Cascadia.

Thanks for coming. I promise everything will be better – next year.