Happy Halloween! And I'm back!

Well, first of all - Happy Halloween!!!  It's one of my favorite holidays and I can't wait to share details of my (3!) costumes this year!

Second of all, I'm so sorry for the two months of radio blog silence!!!  I have a couple of excuses, but only one of them is really a good excuse.  It all started back on Labor Day weekend when my 3 day weekend was shortened into a 2 day one by the failure of the hardware that I'm lead for on-orbit.  Madness ensued and for the next 2 weeks I was busy beyond belief at work and either busy or passed out when I got home.  Free time for blog posts was a losing battle when compared to sleep or just enjoying a couple of hours of my day with S.  Finally my hardware was replaced and things gradually became normal over the next week.  Ok, so that's 3 weeks accounted for and while I could have posted, I think most of you can understand why I didn't.

This was followed by 2 weeks where I wasn't overwhelmingly busy, but I was still extremely exhausted and I went into "easy"mode.  I just wanted to relax and enjoy myself.  I also spend part of that time preparing for vacation - you know, calling credit card companies, booking hotels, set up itineraries, packing, etc.  This is followed by my good excuse: I was in Europe!

Trust me, there are many pictures that will follow!  S and I went to Germany for 2 weeks with our good friend K, including a side trip to Salzburg, Austria and Prague.  It was amazing.  It had been 4 years since I'd been on any kind of extended vacation, so it was long overdue.  We only had spotty internet while we were over there and who wants to spend time writing blog posts instead of enjoying Germany?!?

So now I'm back.  A thousand apologies and I'll try to keep back up with things.  Pictures of my Halloween costumes and trip are coming soon...

(image from here)