In a recent comment someone posed this question to me. While I was almost completely gone for three months, what was I doing? The one fellow blogger who was kind enough to e-mail to ask about my whereabouts, (yes, my one eyebrow is raised at the rest of you) hoped that I had been kidnapped by pirates because “pirates are cool.” Were it so simple as being kidnapped by the Dread Pirate Roberts I’d certainly be much happier with the events of the past 4 months and their effect upon my psyche. In a recent comment another blogger wondered if I’d actually been undercover as a spy. The truth itself lies somewhere in between those two possibilities and a little to the left. I’ve wrestled with my conscience about whether to tell the tale and what consequences the telling might have. Consequences that might affect me and several others. Being a writer, or at least dreaming that I might someday be one, I can’t resist the urge to tell a story that I hardly believe myself. As they used to say in the introduction to the old Dragnet show, (which I only watched in syndication as a very young child because I’m definitely not old enough to have seen the first time around) the story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent. I will also blur some of the details a bit to protect, as they say, my own ass.