Despite my brooding about not being able to play along this year, in the end it was just as well that I did not participate in Blogathon. Now that our cable modem—or rather, the ‘net connectivity in our neighborhood—is behaving itself again, our wireless router is not, and latest weekend was a veritable symphony of profanity as Lloyd and I found ourselves connected for 10 minutes, then disconnected for five. I promise on all that is good and true that if I had been awake and posting for 23.5 hours, only to disappear and not reappear in time to post the last post, my walls would, to quote my boyfriend Lord Flashheart, be decorated in an interesting new shade called Hint of Brain. Nope, this year’s Blogathon, chez PTMYB, was all about the bunni, and I am proud to say that not only did Bunni come through in the style to which we have become accustomed, she also managed to double her pledge total, and then some, in about 48 hours. That’s my girl. 
Not that I sat the event out entirely: I tried to play the trivia game early and often, and I joined forces with the beautiful and kind Julie to fix Bunni the kind of dinner that would power a woman through a long night of sleep-deprived blogging. Julie made an awe-inspiring platter o’ribs, collard greens and cornbread, I brought the corn salsa and yogurt (so’s we could all have the Cornbread Thing) and what would be the last cherry pie of the season.
I had hoped that because summer has been somewhat adventuresome this year—a long weekend on Block Island with Lloyd, my parents and my brother and sister-in-law, to celebrate my stepdad’s 60th birthday; a chance to meet up with some online friends, brilliant minds, visions of loveliness, dear souls all (Joel, Amanda and A.B.) on Joel’s Big, Big Road Trip from Knoxville to western Pennsylvania via New Jersey, New York and Toronto); the upcoming trip to Great Northeastern Agricultural State University, for which Lloyd and I will depart in about two hours—I’d be feeling somewhat chatty about it all, but oddly, the words still stubbornly refuse to dislodge themselves. I am trying to look on the bright side, telling myself that I have a lot of plans in the works right now, and that I am conserving energy for what will soon become a burst of creativity. This does not, however, preclude me from going out for tea with Bunni and moaning to her that this time I mean it, I’m really out of good ideas, and I’ll never amount to anything, and did I mention I have a Birthday with a Zero coming up?, and Lloyd should just go ahead and get my ice floe ready right now, because it’s time to push my underachieving ass out to sea. Normally the sound of Bunni telling me to drink a nice big glass of Shut the Fuck Up terrifies me into behaving myself, but this summer I have been impervious to even the Fear of Bunni. The only way the poor woman can get any relief is to head back to France for two weeks. (Wish I’d thought of that.)
Again, I digress. Astute readers will have noticed an almost throwaway reference to a trip to Great Northeastern Agricultural State University. It’s true: In two hours, Lloyd and I will leave our house, laden with overpacked luggage, laptops, CD and DVD entertainments and a box full of notecards; we will drag all this stuff to the subway, get off at Port Authority, switch to a Hartford-bound bus, switch again to an eastern-Connecticut-bound bus, and eventually find ourselves at the University of Connecticut, where my old pals at the Dodd Center will pull two boxes of old farm reports, poultry co-op journals, extension office mailers, newspaper articles and advertisements, and let me study them for five days. Lloyd, meanwhile, will be meandering around campus, checking bus schedules, sitting in quiet green areas with his books, seeing what he can see and just generally unwinding from city life. (Wish I’d thought of that.) With any luck, by the time we return to New York on Friday, I’ll have another big stack of notes, a better idea of how to organize the book, a few more hours of LSAT study time—because yes, I am still taking the LSAT at the end of September—a few hours of running around campus and/or swimming in the pool at the hotel, and plenty of optimism for the future. Here’s hoping.