Fear not, dear readers, the Beallsvonian behind The Beallsvonian is alive and well, has not been hit by a bus*, and is back in the blogosphere for your amusement--laughing with, laughing at, laughing near, whatever. We had some alcohol-related difficulties on Wednesday, technical difficulties on Thursday, and out-of-town related absence from Thursday until late last night, but we are back and as good as ever, or at worst a mediocre shell of our former selves but continuing to keep on keeping on.

The visit to the New York side of the family was pleasant as always. We catch up and eat good food, which is nice. On the downside, no one is closer to my age than 40 or 13, and that gap causes some issues, mainly boredom. I ended spending a good part of the weekend hanging out in a group where no one else was under 59. But it's a nice quiet time, and I also got to catch up on a lot of sleep, at a rate of about 10 hours per night.

On a somber note, however, I woke up Sunday morning to hear from my mom that her sister had called from home with the news that my 2nd cousin Amy had shockingly gone into labor, "thrown a blood clot" (I'm not sure what this means), and neither the premature baby nor the mother survived the delivery. Now this was not someone any of us in my immediate family were particularly close to, but it was crushing for several reasons. One is that we are very close to some people she was very close to, and as it sunk in how hard they'll be taking this it only got more depressing. Two is that not since my maternal grandmother passed at Christmastime in 1978 had we had a surprising death in the family--anyone who has died has either died at a very advanced age or after a prolonged illness. Three is that it happened Easter morning, which threatens to cloud that holiday for years to come, just as Christmas was clouded for years by my grandmother's death. Fourth, and finally, this was the first person in my extended family of my generation to go (she was 34), which can't help but be sobering.

Sorry for the bummer, but sometimes this space is more for the writer than the readers; hopefully we'll have a lighter tone next time.

*My boss is morbidly obsessed with the idea of someone getting hit by a bus, as she constantly admonishes us to think in terms of, "If we were all hit by a bus tomorrow, would someone be able to figure out what we've been doing, and how to proceed." If she comes in late in the morning, I tell her I was starting to think this was the day the bus got her.