I just returned from a two-week intensive fiction writing workshop. It was an amazing experience, one that I'm sure I'll be parsing in my brain for months to come.

While I was gone, I had no access to e-mail or the Internet. My e-mail piled up at an exponentially higher rate, which has proven to be *most* annoying. The amount of spam coming in has increased an amazing amount. I'm being told that that's been happening across the Internet. Not a good thing.

But more more interestingly, the *news* has changed since I left for the workshop.

Arnold Schwarzenegger (sp?) had just closed the gap on his closest rival, according to polls, in the race to replace California Governor Davis in the recall election. Now the only poll that matters has been taken -- the one officially run by the state -- and Arnold is now governor. Holy cow. A bad day for Arnold's agents and business managers, I imagine, but a good day for him personally, I suppose, and for his political allies (moderate Republicans, I imagine).

Okay, that's not a regime change, insofar as Arnold was starting to lead the opinion polls just before I left, but it's still interesting.

More of a change is the hard fall the current federal administration is undertaking. The CIA has created quite a stir over an alleged "outing" by White House officials of a particular CIA agent in the field. If I understand the story correctly, the agent in the field is the wife of someone who had made the administration not look so good when he publicly announced that he had warned the administration that certain information that they wanted to put into the State of the Union address was unverifiable.

If all this is true, and I haven't read up enough yet to know, then this is a shocker of a change since I went incommunicado. I leave, and the President is doing okay but maybe he's starting to drop in the opinion polls. I come back, and a potentially Very Ugly Scandal is unfolding. If the CIA sticks to its guns and if the allegations turn out to be correct, the White House staff will almost certainly be looking for new work in about a year. (Trust me. I was a history major. :-)

Israel bombed Syria while I was gone? Holy cow!

But even more of a shocker, perhaps the most stunning shift in the planet imaginable over the course of a self-imposed two-week news embargo, is the news that the Chicago Cubs could actually end up going to the World Series.

How the fiddledeefuck did *that* happen?

I take two weeks off, and the entire world has gone crazy.

I promise, it won't happen again in the near future. I'll stay right here and make sure the planet continues to spin correctly on its axis for a little while.

[sigh] It ain't easy being me.