It's quarter-past-two, and I'm in a stuffy shop corner watching a laser cutter work its magic.

Hoo-ha!

I've not written a word in this thing in longer than I'd like to look up right now. Well over a month, I'm sure. There's been no lack of action, but I'm not in a mood to recount in laborious detail, and I've already bumped into a good number of you in person, so I'll just summarize very briefly, then start anew.

My wandering has deposited me in Raleigh again, and I'm enjoying being home very much for the moment. After all that intercontinental chest-puffing last semester, it seems my school is more or less willing to have me back in the sequence where I belong. At least, I've been taking the classes I feel I should be in, and nobody's made a move to stop me. Presumably, I'll still have to present some work from the fall, but the longer we all put this off, the more likely I'll just get a nod and a shrug, and a signature on the line for proper credit.

The studio is quickly becoming my second home again -- as much by choice as necessity at the moment. For the past two days, I've been scrambling to finish up something to send overseas, so I've been working much more than anybody else, but it's a comforting feeling (in a tired, hungry, intoxicated-by-burning-chipboard sort of way). Our instructor this time around is much more pragmatic than anything we've ever encountered (always mentions sales and clients before design), and seems to want very little to do with teaching other than answering questions between phone calls from his office, and impromtu-lecturing on the importance of this or that technique in 'building your client's trust'.

Aha! My wee engraving is finishing up... but I've a good bit left to do on this thing before I sleep.