I too agree with Jackie and Marianna. How about the next person who is going to leave for a "protracted" (and that is relative, of course) period of time start a thread here in Info & Announcements to let others know. And it can be the thread for all of us to use for the same purpose. So far we've kind of been doing that haphazardly, with a "by the way, I'll be gone for the next two weeks" in our last post, wherever that may have occurred, but I think it would be a good idea to have a single thread for this purpose. That is, until we decide it isn't.
I have been in a number of chatrooms and bulletin boards in my five years on the net, and not a one has come close to approaching the level of comraderie and sheer civility of this board. Yes, there are moments that are less than civil, but compared to my experience in other net places they don't even count.
