No column for you!

Sorry, I'm half on vacation this week, half working like a maniac to be able to take time off for dual trips to Monterrey for wedding last weekend and Indiananpolis, city of my birth, tomorrow.

It's true. I am a hoosier.

Many are surprised to find out I wasn't born in a small Oaxacan (can you say WA-HOCK-AN?) village and then crawled through a rat-infested sewer pipe in order to steal the good jobs from legal residents, such as cleaning the McMansions of rich Beverly Hills socialites for $3 an hour or swabbing out the mensroom at Hooters for five bucks a day. Indeed was born right here in the good ole' Midwest, the child of one legal resident and one actual citizen. So, telling me to go back to Mexico --as so many of my loving readers do with enthusiasm and regularity -- makes about as much sense as telling me to go back to Spain in the 15th century. I just can't do it!

Now I am going to visit this home I haven't seen since I was just a toddler, courtesy of an all-expenses paid trip to the Ted Scripps Leadership Institute for Naughty Reporters (or something like that) where I will be punished with three days of workshops, rubber chicken dinners and some odd midwestern ritual called "duck bowling." Run Donald, run!

I am also going to be checking out the city, which is lauded for its urban renewal in the 1990s. I'm going to write about it next week, I think, unless the duck bowling turns dangerous and someone puts out an eye.