by El Zorro Viejo (aka; Jim)

As of tomorrow, I'll be gone, gone, gone from any attachment to the outside world. OK, that's not quite true. I will have the cell phones on, but they will be monitored and I will definitely not be taking calls from my siblings. You see, Sunday is one of those major milestone birthdays, and my siblings have been know, in the past, to jump on those with both feet...wearing cleats. Come to think of it, though, I'm just as bad...which is maybe why I'm truly heading for the hills.

When my sister had her, well, let's be brutal, 50th a couple years ago, somebody (ok, me) tracked her down to the resort hotel in Arizona she was staying at. I arranged for a huge bouquet of helium filled black balloons to be delivered to her: the delivery person walked from one end of that hotel to the other calling out "Delivery for.....". He found her in like the main lobby. The balloons, in addition to being black, had the number of the birthday (50) emblazoned all over them. For the rest of her stay, people pointed, winked and otherwise acknowleged that they knew her little secret. Hah!

So, I will be in the great North Woods for the next five days. We are taking the urchin with us because Grammy couldn't bear another week without the little one's smiling face. We will have a good time canoeing, hiking, swimming and generally goofing off. It will be cooler than our last trip, so we will have a couple fires in the fireplace. And that means I will have to play lumberjack for a bit. All in all, it will be the perfect way to forget that time does march on. There will be pictures when I return. However, until then, here is a shot of us on the front porch of the cabin in July of this year.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. ©El Zorro Viejo 2002-2005