If you can't answer a man's arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.

Well.  That was a far more extensive leave of absence than I expected to take.  

Where do I begin?  I barely remember where I left off.  We were all in the final throes of exams and papers, and people tend to lose each other and themselves right around then.  People lock themselves in a room and hardly ever come out for air, interpersonal communication screeches to a dead halt as people power down their cell phones and block Facebook on their computers, the dining halls become less and less populated, and the campus generally just looks like a ghost town.  Frankly, the campus looks like a possibly post-apocolyptic ghost town for the summer, for all of us who decided to stick around for one reason or another.  But, aside from a few mistakes during the first week (Socal, get it together), it's been warm and sunny and generally beautiful.

I believe my external productivity is inversely related to my current level of introspection.  Quite honestly, I believe that's why I haven't been writing; when there's too much in your head and each piece wants all of your attention, it is nigh but impossible to organize anything into a coherent chunk.  But my mind feels ready, after a much-needed trip around the universe, so to speak.

Oscar Wilde once stated that he chose his friends for their good looks, his acquaintances for their good characters and his enemies for their good intellects.  I have to wonder where I got all of my smart friends.