"I'm Not Even Supposed to Be Here Today!"

Where I'm supposed to be is Xinjiang, midway through a two-week trip out West, getting myself hopelessly lost in the desert. Unfortunately my employers, in their infinite wisdom, put the kibosh on my vacation request, so instead I'm here hanging out with the fourth-graders. Who've recently taken to calling me "Johnny Depp-sensei". Which is itself kind of amusing, but also not quite what I was hoping for at this particular point in time.

I have about 18,000 items waiting in my Bloglines reader from the past two months of internet inattention, but I am going to try and slowly plug myself back in to the news again. And there was much rejoicing!