So what the heck have I been doing with myself since February 25th?

I'm back.

Yet I'm not really sure where I have been since February 25th, which was the last time I blogged.

Of course, that's not entirely true. I should say something along the lines of "February 25th was the last time I successfully blogged" or "February 25th was the last time I blogged and reached a natural conclusion." That is to say, the end.

A couple of those posts will see the light of day someday, served up hot (if not necessarily fresh) through the magic of Blogger, suddenly appearing, date of publication March 2008, as if I'd actually completed them in a timely manner. But some thoughts--notably my half-assed takes on the ever-evolving presidential race or Britney Spears' well-being--are probably best left in a can on the back shelf of the storeroom. Label gone, expiry date unknown. Destined to cause botulism if ever opened and consumed.

Obviously, once again, I've had a rather significant case of bloggus interruptus. Oh, I've blogged, or at least attempted to. But I get . . . distracted. So I end up never quite finishing what I started.

Then the next time I try to blog, I'm bothered by the worry over the last attempt and am unable to reach a satisfying climax to my blogging--or even a full-on blogging tumescence. Once again.

It has begun to trouble me significantly, this blogectile dysfunction. Maybe I just can't keep it (i.e., the blogging) up any longer, and maybe I never will get it up again. Are my days of sowing my wild blog oats far behind me--much like my 29"-inch waist and my hairline, to name but two other "I haven't seen those since the '80s" characteristics of my personhood?

Alas, I've lost my blogging mojo. My blojo, if you will.

Er, "blogging mojo" is probably a better turn of phrase. Less likely to get caught in the snares of an internet filter. Not that anything I've ever written about before would be considered unsuitable for impressionable children or nervous livestock, of course.

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Or it could be simply that I've lived through one of the longest winters I've ever known. While not necessarily a severe winter--I don't recall the temperature dropping below 0 degrees F ever or snowfall reaching more than 6" the entire season--it has gone on for ages. Or at least months. Months longer than I'm used to, even after having been back East for nearly four years now.

For the uninitiated, I think winter in Pittsburgh could best be described like so: Imagine living life in the bottom of deep, dark, quite cold bowl covered over by a very wet, very gray towel. We have hills, we have clouds, and as a result, we have snow, rain, mist, and general doom-and-gloom from November through most of March.

We also must surely have the highest rate of seasonal affective disorder this side of . . . Ohio.

And yours truly has been feeling it quite intensely. Forget the "blues buster" lighting, the trips out West to Las Vegas, the pop music, the home redecorating projects, and the new iPod. Forget, too, embracing the season through snowshoeing, snow shoveling, skating, and skiing. (Editor's note: The latter of which I've yet to do, admittedly. Sigh, maybe next year . . . .) Forget (although you won't be able to) that we're only sixteen days away from the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary, the "Shoutdown in Steeltown" between Obama and Clinton. Nothing was able to get me out of the bottom of that bowl.

Only this weekend has it warmed up enough in Pittsburgh to allow for general carousing about in short sleeves, car windows down while driving around town, or walks in Frick Park, followed by a bout of heavy sneezing and hacking due to the pollen from the trees and flowers now, at long last, in semi-bloom, and not from some lingering and malingering winter crud that settled in around Thanksgiving and held on for dear life and near death until St. Patrick's Day.

Ferchrissakes, it's already April, and we're just now getting daffodils and sunshine, warm rains and budding trees. Even when I was in Kansas three weeks ago, they were already seeing these traditional signs of spring, at least in the non-Texas portions of North America.

I keep saying I want to live in Canada and, lookit, at least I got the weather right. Now all I need is to learn how to use "toque" properly in a sentence and remember when Bryan Adams' birthday is (it's a national holiday up there, apparently), and I'm practically guaranteed honorary citizenship for life. If nothing else, winter should make us appreciate our Canadian brethren and sistren more than we do. How the heck do they do it? And why can't I, at least with half the whining and only sporadic thoughts of suicide from seasonal affective disorder?

Enough already. It is April. It is spring. Time to resurrect. Time to get back to life. Time to get back to the blogging lifestyle. The bloggystyle, if you will.

But, perhaps wisely, you won't.

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One more playlist before I go. What's currently on my iPod, the video version. Fling yourself into spring. And with a little luck, spring yourself into a fling before the season's over with, and you're too hot and sweaty from summer's heat to even think such salacious thoughts.