Oh lordy. It's 1AM here in Chicago, 7AM back home. I'm over for the BlogHer conference thingy and I'm having a bloody great time, despite ongoing jetlag delirium! I keep spontaneously bellowing "SPRING BREAK!" and if I was back home I'd have been clobbered by now.

So much to say, but first and foremost after six years of sterling internet friendship I finally met the foxy vixen SJ of I, Asshole. Actually she is snoozing here beside me, and even though there's nowt but the Powerbook glow in the room, her red red hair is still a glowin'.

I'm com-bloody-pletely overwhelmed by all the bazillions of chicks I've met over the past few days and all the things they write about. I will talk more about those on DG tomorrow. But Blogland just got a whole lot bigger and much wee-er at the same time. I feel so fired up to just write and talk and do more stuff. I've met some real blogging heroes o' mine and some brilliant new people too, such as my other roomate Liz who is typing the night away too. I've never felt so gloriously geeky. Rock n roll.

I miss you Doc!

Oh yeah, just one more thing. Perhaps I am curmudgeonly these days, but when did it become okay to TALK WHILE THE TEACHER IS TALKING? Or in this case, talk while the blog panel people are talking. If you want to chitty chat, that's lovely. But why not do it outwith the panel, and spare the chairs for those who really want to be there in the panel moment. Manners, people!

I think I'm fitted with 12-month goldfish memory when it comes to the Highlands. When the days get long and our neighbours turn an alarming shade of terracotta, once more my thoughts turn to soaring mountains, campfires and snuggly sleeping bags. Twelve months is long enough to think that camping is a great idea. Twelve months is long enough to erase the memory of the most evil of all insects - the Scottish midge.

On Friday night we packed up the tent and the veggie sausages and headed back to Glen Etive. The weather forecast was good, with no chance of our campsite being turned into an island by torrential rain like last year. The sun was shining when we arrived and chose an extremely stunning spot.

Miraculously we managed to get the tent up before the midges arrived in a black cloud. I'd stuuupidly left my trusty Avon Skin-So-Soft repellent at home, but I thought I'd be okay with my gloves, long sleeves and had my jeans tucked into my socks. Best of all we both had these sexy new midge hats. Sure we looked like beekeepers in mourning, and we could barely see each other or the gorgeous scenery. But at least the bugs couldn't crawl up our nostrils or eat our faces.

Yet the midges were determined to ruin any enjoyment of our night. I'd never seen such a relentless swarm. You may be thinking, how can something so small cause such angst? I am telling you, they are truly the most maddening creatures on earth. We tried going for a walk, but they just followed. I tried to read a book, but the pages were soon smudged with tiny corpses. We tried to make tea, but as soon as we poured it they kamikazied into the cups. We fished them out, but whenever I dared venture from beneath my mesh hat to take a sip, they'd swoop down on my hands. I could feel them dive under the gloves to gnaw on my wrists.

You can see/hear the carnage for yourself in this stunning video that I made. Warning: video contains the word BASTARDS.

In the end insanity forced us into the tent. We zipped the door then spent five minutes swearing and slapping at all the midges that followed us, smearing them over the tent walls and over each other while screaming, "I WILL NEVER CAMP AGAIN!"

Despite all my protection, the little bastards managed to get me. Big time. Even worse than last year. My face may have been spared, but they squeezed past my socks and chomped their way around my ankles. And in my desperate scramble to get into the tent, my top must have got seperated from my jeans, so the midges nibbled a neat row all the way across my back. I am wearing a MIDGE BELT, people.

It's made worse by my severe reaction. Some people get tiny red dots that disappears after a few hours, but I get giant, red, swollen, festering insanely itchy sores the size of dimes. Speckled on my wrists. Tattooed right around each ankle. Circumnavigating my waist. And as a very special bonus, there's three bites forming an angry red arrow right above my BUTT CRACK.

I will spare you a photograph of my rear end, but you can witness the hideousness of my right ankle here from two different (but equally repulsive) angles.

I'm so freaking itchy right now I am ready to bite my feet off. My skin feels like it's on fire. I look like a leper. I'm never going outside again. Not without a full space suit, anyway. Same time next year?

I promise this blog isn't turning into What's New Dawg, but people often ask me about my wee pretend dog Kenco, who Gareth sponsored for a Christmas 2005 gift through the Dogs Trust. I'm sad to report that I got a letter to say that Kenco has passed away.

They say he was a boisterous hound. Loved: Football. Hated: Being disturbed while eating. I only wish I'd met him; clearly we had a lot in common.

I always imagined he'd be a real sweetie until I saw this photo of him earlier this year:

Doesn't he look like a total rocket? A real little scrapper. Somehow those fangs and manic eyes made me love him even more. So it almost seemed appropriate that he died in a fight. Well, they called it "a quarrel with one his kennel mates" in the letter, but I like to think it was some kind of canine turf war. He was rushed to the vets but had suffered from internal injuries so they made the difficult decision to put him to sleep.

As you can see from the tributes on his page on DoggySnaps.com, he was a popular boy. I dare you not to get hopelessly hooked on that website, it's like a four-legged Flickr or Facebook!

So Kenco will be missed, but there are other hounds in need of virtual friends. They've transferred our sponsorship to a dog called Peter Pan (Loves: Squeaky toys. Hates: Other dogs) and he looks almost as cheeky.

Arrgh! Once again I seem to have half a dozen half-finished entries that are all rubbish. At least I have a good excuse today - I'm dog sitting! It was a dog sitting emergency. They belong to the parents of a friend of Gareth's and they arrived at 6AM this morning. I don't even know their names! They just sit on the couch shivering and staring at me with saucer eyes. They didn't even try to steal my lunch. Strange hounds. But cute.

UPDATE:  Turns out the wee dugs are called Toby and Tibby. They're brother and sister and a crusty twelve years old. As the day wore on they got a lot more animated and friendly, even after we dragged them up a hill for a two-hour walk in the pouring bloody rain. They've gone home now but have their memory lingers thanks to the 10,000,000 white hairs now coating every surface of our flat and car.