This photo is a rare still from my audition for The Shining II: Back to the Beach. Actually, there is a perfectly logical and innocent reason I am hunkered on the floor in gross disarray, but I will leave that to your imagination. One side effect of Mr. H’s new camera purchase is that one must be prepared to be photographed at any time. Taking out the trash? Expect the paparazzi, using a high ISO setting and telling you about it, then asking you to take out the trash again under different lighting conditions. Now I know how Jennifer Anniston feels, and I am slowly learning the ropes of Extrem-Fame. I had best get knocked up so I don’t get divorced.

Once I was making my way home down Charles Street, when I passed two blond women of a certain age gawking at the window of one of the stores that sells those inexplicable quilted paisley purses. “I just never saw myself as a divorcée,” whimpered one. The other one looked incredulous: “But Boston is a GREAT town for it!”

Boston is indeed a great town, rife with Starbucks and divorce, but I am tearing myself away for a working vacation in…wait for it… East (Bal)Timor. I will be handing out bottled water and charity Christmas CDs to the natives, who will use this manna to cleanse their collective stench and build primitive huts. I am completing a round of vaccinations today, and I expect a call from my financial manager with directions on changing US dollars to Baltimorean currency. Happily, I am also skilled in barter and crude hand gestures.