For the two of you who have been wandering through life as if through a dark hallway, lost, tapping the walls so as not to fall down the stairs, unsure what to do or where to go without the weekly light of my narrative voice– open your eyes. I’m back.

I know, I should have warned you so that you might have had the opportunity to develop some sort of blog patch to ease the cravings/twitching. Alas, in this era of google and yellowpages.com, I couldn’t have risked some superfan out there discovering that I was away for three weeks and  breaking into my apartment to help him/herself to my Friends DVD box set and a half-eaten bag of (now) stale pretzels. Can you imagine the harrowing return to a home without a laugh track or salted snack food? The thought is too painful; it makes me want to lie down with a sitcom rerun and a bag of chips right now….

And for my one friend (who shall remain nameless) who relies on my postings to occupy him (and, I’d like to think, to inspire him) while he’s on the JON, well, I hope I didn’t leave you hanging.

Readers, I missed you too. Whenever something funny happened–when a traveler lunged for his luggage on the baggage claim conveyer belt as if the area was under fire and he was protecting his child with his own body– I wanted to tell you about it. When I ordered a panna cotta in such an awful Italian accent that the waiter thought I requested a pina colada, I wished you were there.

Please don’t pretend that you didn’t even notice I was gone. You don’t have to hide your hurt beneath a mask of indifference. That’s unfair to both of us. And, look, I brought you souvenirs. For the next two weeks, I’ll regale you with trifling anecdotes of my largely uneventful travels. You’ll see, it’ll be like we were never apart.

What? You don’t know if you’ll be able to tear yourself from the July issue of Bacon Busters Magazine? Well that just stings.

(Seriously, that’s a real magazine– an Australia periodical delivering you the hottest in hog hunting since 1961.)