I went to the woods for the weekend. I needed to get away, and a dear old friend needed to get away, and so we rented a cabin near Mt. Hood. It's March, and Oregon is wet and green and cold and beautiful. To get away, into the woods, was perfect.

The cabin was what I'd call "rustic chic," clearly furnished from mail-order catalogs with kitchen-ware by IKEA. And although it was the Pottery Barn version of "roughing it," there was no wireless and no 3G network, and hell, no amount of matching flannel sheets and cozy wool throws can compensate for that lack of "civilization." To be without the Internet for me is rough indeed. I had to tend the fire in lieu of tending to Twitter. Imagine!

But it was good -- conducive to much thinking and some writing. (And an obscene amount of red-wine-drinking.)

I fear I'll sound like some sort of E. M. Forster or Jane Austen novel or something, but beware the young woman sent to the countryside. Intrigue. Scandal. Plot twists.