The thing is this.

What I've always wondered about the serious bloggers is, where on earth do they find the time? I mean, bloggers are by definition not journalists, right -- the fundamental difference is between the mainstream media (which I swear I've seen called 'MSM') and the 'blogosphere' -- (so, yes, I have a difficult time with 'blogs' like those hosted at washingtonpost.com, but that's probably a conundrum for another day) so presumably at least some percentage of them have jobs or other responsibilities, and the mad news-breaking bloggers are obviously reading tons of things I'm not reading, and I'm already a slacker. So it's really where do they find the time and where do they find the things to read that enable them to make the connections and break the news which is then carried all around the Intarweb at the speed of data by all the rest of us you.

Now that I think about it, I have that question about a lot of grad students, as well. So it's a worldwide conspiracy -- not that everybody knows something I don't, that's a given, but that everybody knows where to look for stuff. Huh.

So that went well.

I see from my records that it's been a hundred (or, okay, two and close to a half) years since I updated this thing. It's really no longer the same thing, therefore, is it -- I ought to draw a line and say Right, starting over from here. (I have accomplished this by switching to a new template. Also I couldn't make the old one do what I wanted anymore.)

At that time, fall '03, I was in the last semester of my master's degree, which is probably why when I said "I'll rant (or rave) about things that annoy (or please) me", I promptly went ahead and did nothing of the kind. In the twenty-nine months that followed, I did some teaching, lost an aunt, finished my MA, spent a couple of months curling six days a week, worked a couple of jobs, stood up in my brother's wedding, legally changed my residence to Ohio, voted there, moved to England to begin another master's degree, watched my countrymen re-elect the most dangerous president since Nixon, joined a couple of choirs, got another couple of jobs, managed to wind up as president of my college's student association, presided over the disaffiliation of that student association from the university's student union, and met a wee baby who is not really my niece -- and am now, in (roughly) spring '06, at almost the same point relative to finishing this master's degree as I was in the fall of '03 to that one. So, what a good time to revive (or re-revive) the blog, eh?

Actually mainly it's Kate's fault that I'm back at all.