Before getting into anything else: yes, as previously reported (or implied!) I will be trying my damnedest to Write My A** Off this Saturday, June 12.

And wow, I’ve gotta say — it’s way overdue for me. This has been one of the longest dry spells of writing I’ve gone through in almost three years. Blog posts aside (so yes, technically I have been writing…), over the last two months or so I think I’ve written no more than a couple-three hundred words on any single day. And that’s been very scattered, un- or utterly misdirected, fitful. I’m determined to turn that around, though. This morning I did a little over 500 words, simply by forcing myself to start typing, and maybe I’ll be able to get something crankin’ by Saturday. I sure hope so. This has made me miserable — literally, beyond words.

In the meantime, a couple of minor things:

• We got back from New Orleans fairly late Sunday night. Although I was able to at least visit my favorite blogs over the weekend, via Blackberry, I’m lamentably behind on reading for real, let alone commenting. I’ll get back into that rhythm soon too, I hope.
• In a weekend comment on a post here, Froog reported that Running After My Hat had been loading painfully slowly for him. I’d noticed it too, frankly, although I thought it might have something to do with other network problems. Froog’s comment led me to poke around in a couple of suspiciously soft spots in the infrastructure. I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I think I’ve traced the problem to that Google Buzz thingumabob I mentioned in an aside a couple of posts ago. So I disabled that thing — I don’t care how cool or interesting a feature is, if it cripples a site’s basic functionality it’s not worth including. Do let me know if any of you are experiencing other (or the same!) problems.