After two weeks of downtime, I'm back in the saddle. Work, a brief unwired vacation, and more work have kept me away from the blogging grind, perhaps for the best; I've been living life rather than recording it. I've also been blissfully ignorant of world events for much of that time, only catching glimpses of a USA Today here, a Coastal Times there. Like Paul Simon sang, “I gather all the news I need on the weather report.”

So much has happened that I've let pass without comment. The blogosphere is full of comment on these things; I have nothing to add to the parallel monologues of the past few weeks. I read the Wall Street Journal for the first time in 15 days this morning, and I think I feel a tiny bit of what Ken Bowersox will feel when he returns from the International Space Station today–a sudden return to a world that is familiar, yet changed.