I’m closing up shop a day early. I thought I could keep things up and running until tomorrow night, and then had a blinding insight: What the hell for? Excellent question. Everybody takes a break sometimes, and it’ll do me good to have this room packed up and ready to move a little early. Note that you can send me e-mail until the bitter end. Only the desktop computer — the one with my web software — is going into storage

I feel a little bad about this. Ms. Lippman just gave me another nice call-out. (She said in an e-mail that my website is "about something," which just goes to show how thoroughly she’s been fooled.) But I gotta do what I gotta do, so: A break.

Tentative return: A week from today, August 13. Maybe earlier, but doubtful. Maybe later, but probably not. When was the last time a cable guy showed up at your house earlier than expected? By then, the house should be unpacked and settled, the computer set up, and a week’s worth of blogfodder ready for your amusement. In the meantime, let’s settle a question that’s surely been eating at many of you: Why did they call that drink — Kahlua, Bailey’s Irish creme, banana schnapps — a Blow Job, anyway?

Ashley has the answer: Because you are supposed to put it all in your mouth…the Baileys will start to curdle, and you have to figure out whether to spit or swallow.

Oh…man. I didn’t need to know that. (But now I’m glad I do.) Deb reports the Car Bomb — Bailey’s and Jameson’s, dropped boilermaker-style into a pint of Guinness — is called, up Madison way, the Irish Car Bomb. Drink a few, drive your car and become a human bomb, maybe.

Trust alcohol to lower the tone around this joint.

I got a little work done today, but not enough, having taken a long break to try to set up iChat AV on the new laptop. iChat AV combines the scintillating nature of e-chat communication with audio and video and is, for all intents and purposes, the picturephone that children of my generation were promised would be ours by the time of our adulthood. That it didn’t work out that way is only proof of my contention yesterday — that the effect of technology can’t be accurately predicted. It turns out we have good reasons to keep the telephone an audio-only device, but the idea of having a video chat with my friend J.C. in Atlanta seemed like a good idea. I was going to carry the laptop and the camera outside and show him Alan at work on the boat — all wirelessly, mind you. It seemed the ultimate stupid use of technology; I liked the idea of this particular communication being intercepted by aliens, who would say, "He’s not done with that thing YET?"

But alas, it was not to be. My video camera is incompatible with not only iChat, but the latest version of iMovie, too. This does not surprise me. It’s a JVC, about which nothing more need be said. Moral of the story: Don’t buy JVC. Sub-moral of the story: Go buy a new video camera!

And go read Jon Carroll, in a pitch-perfect rendering of why columnists shouldn’t write from vacation, even if it does make the whole trip tax-deductible. How does he do it? This is a subtle topic. You probably never realized how much you disliked Ellen Goodman’s August letters from Maine until you read this; I didn’t, anyway.

Speaking of vacation letters, I’ll see you in a week, then.