Gratuitous Random Vacation Observations

* Greetings from the Llama Undisclosed Vacation Location. Let me start by noting that I'm typing this on the 'rents' iMac. Somebody please tell me why so many people swear by these things. I think it bites. For one thing, I can't even read the site because Netscape is doing something horrid to the settings. When I finally tracked down the monitor controls to try and affect an adjustment, the damned machine informed me that this was system software and I wasn't allowed to open it, thank you very much.

* Bonus High Point of the trip so far: Meeting up with the Random Penseur for a couple hours of adult beverages and talk on the way up. RP turns out to be every bit as engaging and entertaining in person as he does in the blogsphere.

* Unforseen Low Point of the trip so far: Tuesday morning there was a bad tanker truck spill on I-95 south of New Haven, CT that totally closed the northbound lanes. We got completely, utterly enmeshed in the snarl. To make matters worse, the Connecticut State Police seemed to consider their job to be finished once they'd blockaded the highway and set up signs saying "Detour" pointed to the nearest exit ramp. No directing traffic, no monitoring of the alternative route whatever. Do you know what it's like trying to crawl up Route 1 through Orange, West Haven and New Haven with the rest of the I-95 spillover traffic? Suffice to say that our trip to Boston (our next stop), which should have taken about three hours, wound up taking nine.

* Related to that last item, let me just give some huge Llama Luv to the Friendly's of Meriden, Connecticut, which we hit once we'd got clear of the jam. It certainly saved my sanity and quite probably the lives of one or more of my children. At the end of our late lunch/early dinner, the Llama-ettes asked if they could have dessert.

"Yes," I said, "You may each have a Fribble for the car."
"What's a Fribble?" they asked.
"Well, it's a very special milkshake that you can only get at Friendly's."
"But....what if we want something else?"
"No, you don't understand. This is Friendly's. You've GOT to get a Fribble. It's simply the Word. As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever, amen."

They got the Fribbles.

And it was good.

* Anyhoo, we're all settled in now. I was just out with my three daughters, two nieces and nephew, climbing about on the rocks of the little cove below our cottage. Aside from the fear that one of them would get swept off and carried all the way to the Hebrides, this is the stuff the doctor ordered.

* I'll leave you with an observation resulting from a quick peek at the headlines this morning: You don't seriously think "they" would have announced the bust up of another massive airline bombing scheme if Lieberman had defeated Lamont, now, do you? Well?