I should tell you, although I do so reluctantly, that I am on my way to Bermuda. Yes, right now. I have dashed into a café to enjoy a final wireless net connection (and chocolate-chip cookie) before heading to the dock where my cruise ship awaits.

You may be wondering how a lifelong anti-cruise activist has gotten himself into this predicament. You can blame my husband, who a few days ago convinced himself it was a good idea to take a last-minute lecturing position on a week-long excursion to Bermuda. In lieu of actual money, the payment is two free tickets, everything included.

I love the idea of spending time with Rob and possibly relaxing a bit, especially considering that my last vacation was spent walking thirteen miles a day while simultaneously battling pneumonia. I do not love water. It unnerves me even in the shower, where I carefully stick one body part at a time under the stream. I’m not afraid of water, exactly, or at least no more than I’m afraid of anything else; it simply isn’t my element. I’m an earth sign, my intellect is rather airy, my personality is wooden, my temper is fiery, and my rapier wit is metallic, but nowhere in this elemental concatenation do we encounter two molecules of hydrogen combined with one of oxygen.

I understand you humans are something like seventy-five percent water, and I feel sorry for you.

So anyway, I won’t have a very reliable Internet connection, but if blogging doesn’t begin again in a week, send out the Marines. I have the very uncomfortable feeling that my old nemesis Ursula the Sea Witch is up to her old tricks.