Dear Friends: I just uploaded this photograph I took back in October 2015 for a couple reasons. Reason number one is it's a sweeping view, and I thought you might enjoy it. The winding road really gives a sense of just how vast this area is. This was taken on one of the few semi-sunny days we had on our last vacation. I really love the variation of colors here. The second reason I've uploaded this is to let you all know I'm probably going to be off the grid for a while. I will drop in and try to comment whenever I can, but for at least a couple of weeks it's going to be pretty spotty. Right now, real life is throwing so many obstacles in my way, it's difficult to get even one render done in the space of one or two weeks. In addition to my job being a continuing pain in the butt, I've been feeling rotten for about the last week, with one thing and another. Early this week, my throat started hurting, and showing all the signs of strep throat. Thursday morning when I got up I felt so rotten that I emailed everyone at work to let them know I wouldn't be in. That lasted about an hour. There was so much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth via both email and telephone, that I finally just said "screw it" and went on in to work despite how crappy I felt. On top of that, I didn't think running around a Children's Hospital feeling the way I did was a really good idea. But I guess having a warm body (it was a warm body indeed, as I was running a fever) available to fix printers was more important. I haven't had a raise in over two years, and they damn well better fix that when April rolls around. If I'm THAT indispensable, someone needs to cough up a bit more coinage. Continued below: