I haven't been inspired lately. That's why my entries have been looking back at a trip I took five years ago. It's a useful exercise, allowing me to relive that summer and to add elements I remember now to what I wrote then, in addition to providing some commentary from five years down the road.

But I haven't been up for really writing of late. Even after this weekend, which was a pleasant, somewhat unexpected, and enjoyable trip to Boston, I don't have much of an itch to type out the details. I've got to fix this somehow.

I'm excited for the coming weeks. We're having a barbecue at my parents' house this weekend, with some good, close friends (and a seestor) coming in from afar, and Mom's birthday is during the week after that. The weekend of the 25th, we've got a suite in New York � we have to share it with Casey's dad and stepmom, but it's a weekend in the City without having to hop the bus back each night � and then a four-day week before Leanne's wedding in Allentown. And though it looks like Dorney Park won't happen because of Casey's wedding commitments, the fact that the rehearsal dinner (to which I get to go, accompanying Casey) is a barbecue at Leanne's parents' house is one of the best things I've ever heard, though it's my first rehearsal dinner. Then the next weekend, when Moom and the Bass come to NJ to see Antonio y Banderas in Nine, I'm taking two days off and spending a long weekend in Maine, my first trip up there since 2000, I think. It's been so long I'm afraid to calculate it. I'm excited already, both because I get to see my family up there before one cousin starts her freshman year in college and the other spends her junior year of high school abroad in Ecuador but also because I get to take the trip without leaving Casey all alone. I'm sure she and her mother and sister will be happy to have a weekend to themselves. I'll go up there with very little planned, except maybe a day trip to Acadia National Park or a very early morning in an attempt to shoot sunrise photos of Pemaquid Point Lighthouse. And I'll probably stop at L.L. Bean on the way home and maybe check out some of the other stores in Freeport � if I decide I can spend any money.

Then, it appears, there will be a couple of open August weekends (maybe time to frantically force in some beach time as the summer quickly draws near its end) and, though I'll be working on Labor Day, a Labor Day weekend spent on the New Jersey concert circuit: John Mayer and Counting Crows at the Arts Center; Springsteen at Giants Stadium (what a way to wrap up the summer) for the final show of the homestand that begins tomorrow (to which my parents have tickets).

And somehow, some way, I MUST get myself on an exercise regimen because I will not have my stomach hanging over my waistband before I'm 30. Or ever. I've got to run � around the neighborhood, around the high school track (maybe to the high school and around the track) � and I've got to do pushups and situps and maybe break out the Billy Blanks tapes, neighbors downstairs be damned.

Oh, look � more stalkerazzi photos of Pam Anderson. I've got to work.