An hour ago, I turned on my computer for the first time in eight days. Still haven't read a newspaper in that time. Needless to say, I'm a little behind.

Long ago, we planned a family vacation for the past week. I knew that I might miss some exciting Opening Week baseball. I knew I would miss my grandmother's 94th birthday.

I was hoping that my absence during Final Four weekend would guarantee a Stanford appearance - but so much for positive superstition.

I did not expect the semi-makeover of the Dodgers, nor that the Dodgers (and Tigers, for that matter!) would be 4-1 when I returned to the Internet.

And I certainly did not expect that my mother would suddenly have to have a pacemaker in the middle of said vacation.

Fortunately, everything and everyone seems to be in the bst shape possible.

It's certainly weird to return like this, feeling a certain responsibility to be on top of the Dodgers and yet knowing little more about them than I do about the Loch Ness Monster.

Milton Bradley is a Dodger. Franklin Gutierrez, Jason Romano and Jolbert Cabrera are not. Shawn Green is a first baseman. Adrian Beltre is apparently unhappy about batting seventh, but has three home runs. Jeff Weaver and Kazuhisa Ishii pitched ... well?

One of the more heartening experiences of my return was to see the (non-spam) comments on the website. I feel fairly confident that I can skip trying to retrace the past week through the local papers, and just go through the 40 comments on my farewell entry as my principal source of catch-up material. Thanks for the great discussion.

Frankly, I don't know how I'm going to approach catching up. I will probably just hit the ground running, but at some point I'm sure a reflection on the transactions of the past week will become relevant.

Here are the questions I have on my mind: