Ahhhhhhh!

This is dangerously close to at least one version of my perfect morning.
The sun is shining brilliantly in a perfect, cloudless blue sky, the temperature is a comfortable shirtsleeve 66 degrees and I'm sitting on my upstairs balcony porch blogging on my VAIO via our wireless internet connection.
I have a cup of coffee at my side and Ruthie the Wonder Dog is surveying the world from her dogservation post just outside the porch railing.
The only sounds are the birds chirping, the distant hum of traffic on the highway some five blocks away and the voices of children on the playground equipment at the park a block south. Every now and then, someone - usually a farmer in a pickup truck or on a tractor - drives past. I can also hear the distant groan of the Smith Trash Service packer truck compacting someone's trash. Friday is trash day here and ours awaits the truck at the curb.
If I listen very closely through the haze of background sounds, I can hear the snap of the flag as the wind billows through it on the nearby Little League baseball field.
This is what the folks who built my house 100 years ago had in mind when they designed a small balcony porch just off the master bedroom. Of course, the view was mostly farms and forests when Pearlsend was constructed in 1905. And the builders would have found the idea of a wireless notebook computer and the internet to be completely incomprehensible.
I grew up in a town of 2,500 and remember quiet June mornings like this from when I was a kid so, despite my 34 years in the Big City, I feel very much at home here.
That said, I'm more than ready to load the Subaru Forester with camera and camping gear and head for Colorado, Utah and points west a week from next Sunday.
Even more than I, Maria desperately needs a vacation. She's been working endless hours of overtime and is fried to the point where her publisher and her editor have threatened to confiscate her key to the newspaper office if she doesn't take a vacation.
We're photographing a wedding on Saturday, June 25 and the plan is to get out of town either that night or early the next morning. I favor a well-rested morning departure, but I understand Maria's eagerness to get on the road. The VAIO will make it possible for me to edit the wedding photos and post them to our Printroom.com site where the bride and groom and their friends and families can order prints of whatever images they like. All I need is a WiFi hotspot somewhere in Missouri or Kansas to upload the images from the road. And, of course, check e-mail and blog.
We plan to return to the canyonlands of Utah - Moab, Bryce Canyon and Zion - with a foray through Monument Valley before looping back to spend time with our friends Tim and Linda in Alma, Colo.
It remains to be seen if and when I do my 20th Annual Mid-Life Crisis Tour on the motorcycle. July has filled up, August is loading up as well and September may be the only time when I can get away.
But in the meantime, I'll sit here with a dozing dog at my feet, sip my coffee and surf the internet.