Hello, dear readers. (Not that I have any readers left, owing to my posting approximately three times in the past year!) If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, I'm going there in a handbasket because I have mentally composed dozens of interesting articles to post here. Of course, by the time I get a chance, they're always old news. But I do have a new blog. It's completely devoid of the political commentary and postmortems of the weekend's partying you have come to know and love from the WYD blog, but it's written in what I hope is an entertaining style.

As you well know, I am an avid shopper, so it stands to reason that it is a shopping blog. My new website, Mamakaze.com, is geared toward moms (and stepmoms, and even cool aunts) who shop online but don't have time to peruse the magazines to find the latest styles. You also may know that I don't require sleep and thus have copious amounts of time to pore over the pages of Vogue and RealSimple in the wee small hours. Therefore, running a shopping website is the perfect job for yours truly.

Of course, my main objective in posting tonight is to get Mamakaze in the search engines by having a few pages online that link to my fledgling site. But as a side benefit, I get to update you all on my life -- boring and alcohol-free though it may be!

Little Maddi is 14 months old and has a 50-word vocabulary. She isn't walking much but who needs to, with those communication skills? She enjoys spicy foods such as Monterey Jack, raw ginger and wasabi. No, really, I'm serious. We aren't sure if she has nerve endings.

And here, for your viewing pleasure, is a shot of Maddi and me on her second-ever trip to the beach a week ago.