Three years since I ceased chronicling my life on this thing, something I'd been doing fairly steadily since 2006.

The whys are multifold.

For one thing, I'd stopped moving, and for a lifelong nomad movement is tantamount to being interesting. Without endless travel, who am I? 

For another, I became bored with chronicling events in long-form prose in an era when everything was moving to the short dopamine hits favored by the matrix. 

And finally, after a dozen+ guidebooks, two books of short stories, a novel which...let's just say that while Spinning Karma got some good reviews, it didn't do so well at the box office and leave it at that.

In any event, I'm back. Partly because I miss writing, and partly because the Snarky Tofu brand has been appropriated by a T-shirt company (look 'em up yourself - why should I give their algorithm a boost) and I figure hey, why not.

(Blogger has changed it's interface. I cannot make heads or tails out it. Fuck it, I still remember basic HTML coding. Does this thing even have a spell checker anymore? Will anyone notice? Is anyone even out there anymore?) 

Anyway, I need to assume someone is. Hello!

My last howl into darkness was on my 50th birthday, January of 2020. We'd returned to Portland after three years in Taiwan and were about to embark on an exciting new chapter in my long career in tourism. And then...2020 unfolded. And the travel industry collapsed, along with so much else.

A kidney stone of a year
After a few months of unemployment, I transitioned from a mostly-dead travel industry into the quite alive social services field, in which I am still gainfully employed. 
Somewhere along the way we adopted a cat. Later on, another cat we'd given up for adoption when we moved to Taiwan came back to us. 
Full time employment has its perks. Banks will lend you money more readily. After a year of lockdown in a one-bedroom apartment in North Portland, Stephanie and I bought a house out in a town called Pendleton, way out in the dry side of the Pacific Northwest. It's a big house, built in either 1939 or 1941, depending on who you ask. 
Our Castle and Our Keep (Mid-May)
Gardening. All those years hanging out with permaculture people planted seeds. If you happen to be one of these people, I was taking notes. This year I grew corn, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, peas, sunflowers, yams and a few other items. Next year I'll grow more. The Garden, Mid-August
This seems as good a place as any to stop. 
If we've lost contact over the years and you want to reconnect, you'll find me at the same email address I've had since this blog started. 
For reasons I can't quite put my finger on, I feel like ending my first foray back into blogging with a few lines of dialogue from Apocalypses Now:

Willard: They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound. 
Kurtz : Are my methods unsound? 
Willard : I don't see any method at all, sir.

No method at all. Indeed.