AddieStan

This morning came word that your blogstress's colleague and friend, Brian Beutler , that gifted young reporter, blogger and crypto-crooner, had taken three bullets in his mass, thanks to a botched robbery on a Washington, D.C., street. And he lives. And cracks wise . And, miraculously, is expected to make a full recovery. For the record, Beutler has done some of the best reporting on the Bush administration's flouting of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that she has read anywhere. And she would say that even if she wasn't his editor.

Your blogstress last week lost her good friend, the composer Scott Upright, to his defeat by a longstanding illness. Scott was an artist of a most unusual sort; his gifts seemed unlimited to any one medium or discipline. He was an accomplished singer, composer, choreographer and designer. And cook. And human. And, above all, friend. Your cybertrix is bereft.

With so much going on in the world outside your blogstress's mien, she has be slow to apply the cursor to her own breakaway republic. Do forgive, mes amis .