No, I'm Not Dead.

I've been informed (via my wife) that, according to the intrepid Margurette Awad, currently of Perth, Australia, I need to update my blog.

Ok, Margurette--and anybody else who may still occasionally drop by to sniff around here for signs of life--consider it updated.

Actually, I've been experiencing a feeling I haven't had for a long, long time now (not since the last time I had a course that required me to keep a journal). While I had imagined the blog being an emotional and intellectual outlet--and therefore becoming a key player in the sanity maintenance game--this summer it came to feel like an obligation--and therefore turned out to be a plant by the other team in said game of (keeping your) wits.

I could go through the litany of reasons why this situation developed--a new baby, moving twice in one summer, preparing for a new job, going through a complicated and protracted house hunt, trying to develop both short-term and long-range plans for my scholarship. Ok, so I will go through the litany. But I also have to acknowledge to myself and any readers that I am, have been, and likely always will be a spurty writer. While grad school in general and the diss in particular taught me how to be more tortoise and less hare, I'm likely to always have some periods of intense production followed by periods of relative dearth. So it goes for my research; so it goes for my blog.

That said, you can, should you care, expect more frequent production from me, at least until Winter break. I just seem to be more bloggy when school's in session. Especially now that I have a cozy office, a reasonably regular schedule, and a nice computer (finally!--my home computer has recently taken to informing me that I am running a counterfeit copy of Windows--thanks a lot, Simplified Computers of Champaign, IL--as well as to displaying bold, primary-colored vertical stripes on the screen in sleep mode).

So I'm not dead. I was just missing. And, apparently, missed. (Thanks, Margurette.)