Hello? Are you alive? Cause I am. Despite my radio silence.

Thanks to you, my great friends, who have filled my inbox with inquisitive emails, and my voicemail with loving messages (and in Ron’s case, hateful messages) over the past two months.

There’s no way to go about it but to tell the honest-to-gosh truth. And the truth is this: I went on vacation with my husband to Argentina for a week and a half. We had the time of our lives. I will post pictures to show you what a great time it was. Other than that, I had a miserable fall. My priorities were all out of whack, and the only way I could lift my spirits and/or feel any sort of goodness about myself was to consistently write large checks to non-profits to coerce my conscience into behaving. I’m sure the children in Burkino Faso were thrilled, but I was starting to settle into head space that I hadn’t visited since 2004. And I didn’t want to go there.

So last week I cried a lot. And then I quit my job. And now I am in the process of re-prioritizing my life.

I have successfully put my husband through graduate school, and now he is in the career of his dreams. We can live on his salary, and (plug your ears, feminists in the crowd) it feels really good to welcome him home after he’s worked a long day and know that he put the food on the table. I appreciate him all the more now that I have the time and energy to do so.

And because he loves me more than anyone else has ever loved me, he has challenged me to stop being a coward and start living the life that I dream of. A life where I tangibly touch the lives of people in need, and a life where I pursue things people always teased me about - like spending my days with animals, and winning a Grammy in audio engineering.

The people in my life that I respect think I’m totally insane for walking away from a career in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression. But I have nothing to lose, because my happiness was sold off a long time ago. And frankly, I have everything to gain.

So I’m in the process of figuring out what is the best way to share my talents and my energy with the world in need. I’m tossing around ideas like buying a business where people can come and create for art therapy. Or training seeing-eye dogs. Or recording music where the proceeds go to a terrific cause. Or blogging for charities. Or doing all of the above.

But you can rest assured that I’m bringing Verbal Intent back with a vigor. And I fully intend to be more honest, more real, and more me than ever before.

When did the site design get all screwed up?

From Daily Daguerreotype

Another thing I swiped from my Grandmother one day, this little globe canister make me smile every time I glance at it. It’s gotten quite beat up over the years which, in my mind, adds to the appeal. Not only is this my favorite shade of blue, but I love how it sets off the gold trim - plus the font used is to die for.

Initially we used it solely to store spare change that eventually Matt would take to the grocery store and exchange via Coinstar for iTunes giftcards. This always seemed to please him immeasurably. Lately, however, we’ve also been using it to store the guitar picks which previously were tossed willy nilly on the coffee table, but now are too dangerously close to Berlin’s digestive tract. It is well suited to both purposes.

Many thanks to Jon for the new design of Verbal Intent. Still working out a weird IE glitch where the sidebar floats to the bottom of the page. If it looks funny to you, maybe you should make the switch to Firefox. I’ll keep working on it though.

OK, well we’re back online. We’ve decided to go with a USB modem which costs a bit more than DSL per month but is highly portable and allows us to finally power up Janet, my dinosaur of a PC (yes, we name our computers), to use Photoshop to touch up my photos for upload. It’s been a policy of mine to touch up photos only slightly, but now I’ll be able to remove those poles from behind people’s heads. At least the ones that aren’t being used for dancing.

This weekend I have lofty plans of taking Berlin to the dog park to get her swamp on and to hit the city for a photo shoot. I have missed playing around with my puppy and my camera. So I’m sure next week will be rife with blog posts and photos for your viewing pleasure.

Oh, and how could I possible forget to tell you that WE’RE GOING TO SEE BRIAN REGAN ON SATURDAY NIGHT! It was a strange and pretty unnerving realization when Matt and I concluded a few years ago that we love going to comedy clubs. We are so white trash.

We’ve been using neighbor wifi for the past 6 months which may or may not be classified as minor sinning. It has now been locked and we’re in the process of getting cable internet. Until then, posting will be light.