Having returned from a very pleasant road trip with my family (we drove from Chicago to the Badlands area of South Dakota, and camped along the way), I was dismayed to see that the Tenacious Blog had not taken on a life of its own in my absence. No new posts had magically written themselves and queued themselves up for publication. The predictable ruse of posting a series of “Best of the Tortoise” items didn’t fool you, and traffic to the web site and blog is off a bit. Of course, it is August, and many of you are likely to be off on camping trips or other diversions of your own. But September will be upon us soon, and in my experience, the pace of life will pick up considerably after Labor Day (apologies to overseas readers for the occasional U.S. –specific references). With the expected surge of traffic, I feel the pressure to get back in the writing groove again.