If Goldy thinks he’s paying too much for our free blog now, wait until he hears this: We’re taking a mini-vacation! It turns out that the bean counters in our corporate overlords’ human resource department have discovered that we at Various Things & Stuff have amassed too much vacation time. And that means forced vacation, the kind you have to take in France and Spain, or so we’ve heard. On to the tapas! And the wine!

Anyway, we’ll be gone starting Thursday and continuing until Jan. 15, at which point we’ll be back with all new episodes. But we may try our hand at remote blogging, by which we use our BlackBerry to blog from remote, exotic locations, such as the sunny seaside of Southern California. Our corporate overlords can’t stop us from doing that, damn it!

So, until we get back in the saddle — or Office Depot discount chair, as the case may be — try not to miss us too much. And if you really get desperate, there’s always our column in CityLife, published every Thursday.