I was supposed to be on vacation this week, but I didn't go. That's for two reasons. First, last week fell apart with too much information intake in too short a time during a week that got started late because the week before that ran over. (The confusion you felt reading that epitomized the week.)

Second, I never figured out any place to go. I haven't "gone" on vacation, as in "leaving home and heading to a purely-recreational destiny for relaxation and no work obligations" in over a decade. It's not ever something I've done much - back in the white-badge days, "vacation" usually meant coming home to see family. I'm not used to resorts or beaches or (ugh) nature, so I don't really know where to go.

Mind you, if I'd had plans, I would have carried them out. I just saw no need to get further behind during a slow news week (post-Q3, post-Expo, post-10.4.2) for dogma's sake when I have no place to go and relax. I'll try again in August or September.

However, I did not work yesterday and today to go through with something I had foolishly planned for "vacation" anyway - housecleaning. I haven't had the best track record in regularly vacuuming or mopping, or using wet wipes on the floor or the "crevice" tool. I'll do it, and then I'll put it off for 6 months too long, and then it becomes a major task again.

On Sunday and Monday, I completely cleaned out the remnants of one room so now it's available for me to play in, should I ever have reason to play with anything. I completely vacuumed the bedroom and attached bathroom, scrubbed everything, moved furniture that should have been moved years ago, and even used the "crevice" tool. After cleaning the bathroom, I am convinced that the task was why God invented the Warehouse Club pack of Disinfectant Wipes.

I cleaned so much that I burned out the vacuum cleaner.

For much of today, the vacuum was making a slightly off-spec sound, and there was a strongish rubbery-ozone smell. Not having run the vacuum in those rooms in a while, I figured I had just forgotten what it smells like. Tonight, though, when doing final cleaning in the back hall, kitchen, and dining room, it actually emitted either smoke or dust. "It smelled like burning."

After some inspection, I find that my upright vacuum is now, more or less, a canister. The entire brush apparatus looks fine but does not work at all - running it over a floor may or may not pick up anything. Using the hose still works and doesn't smell like burning. I finished up a few spots and then gave up, but the house is mostly clean. Would still like to vacuum a few places, though.

I put the Ionic Breeze in the dining room to try to get some of the burning odor out, and it seems to have worked. A few people have asked me to follow up on Moronic Breeze, now that I've had the thing for over three months, and tell you what I think. I think "eh." I still have a stuffy head from time to time, but it seems less frequent. I don't notice the cleaner air smell in the office much anymore, but I don't turn it off, either, and the plates certainly are collecting dust each week. If I put it in a closed room overnight, even a 20-foot-square room, the air smells noticeably cleaner in the morning. And when I moved it tonight to tackle the vacuum cleaner's immolation, it does seem to have freshened the air rather quickly and noticeably. I'm not rushing out to buy another one, but if I still had the opportunity to get a second one at half price, and if I had some extra cash, I'd strongly consider it.

I hope to get back to work Tuesday or, at worst, Wednesday (if all this domestication left my back too sore to sit still for most of a day). The cobwebs are clearing in my head, too. And tonight, I wrote this story because I wanted to write what it says, and that's all I have to say about that.