I'm back in Seattle. Thanks for your patience while I was out serving on nonprofit journalism boards in Washington, D.C., and then serving as a bridesmaid in San Francisco.

Over in Redmond, several hundred Microsoft employees have been stranded by the volcano eruption in Iceland and the cancellation of flights to Europe.

Last week, Microsoft held its annual business meetings, bringing employees from around the world for in-person meetings at the corporate headquarters in Redmond.

Birger Steen, vice president for small and medium-sized business and distribution in Microsoft's Partners group, said he knew of 500 employees stranded in Redmond by the giant ash cloud that has grounded flights for days.

"I had a barbecue here on Sunday" for the workers who were stranded, he said. "I've lent out a couple of offices." Steen, who previously served as general manager of Microsoft Norway and Russia, now lives here. "It's been a pretty intense few days on Facebook," Steen said, adding that he marveled at how Twitter quickly became a network for people to find ride shares across Europe.

Of course, Steen was also already thinking about how the travel nightmare could help spur sales of Microsoft products, such as Business Productivity Online Suite and Unified Communications Server.

Lou Gellos, spokesman for Microsoft, said a couple dozen people were stranded in his corporate communications group in Redmond. Many are still working out of the RedWest building.

He snapped the photo above of people using a conference room as a communal office.

Microsoft blogged about employees stranded in Seattle here, with the to-be-expected pun about the ash cloud and cloud computing.

"They may be stranded in Seattle, but instead of letting the ash cloud interrupt business, Microsoft is working through the cloud," Dominic Carr, director of Microsoft News Center, wrote in the blog post.

Photo of Ali Perkins (in blue, from UK), Ricardo Adame (center top, Germany), Thomas Mickeleit (right, holding paper, Germany) and Wendy Gold, (right, in black, France) were among the many Microsoft employees from Europe stranded in Seattle after the volcanic eruption in Iceland: Microsoft.