And we're back. Not completely though. Walking into math and poli sci Thursday afternoon, something about me was amiss. But I chose to ignore it. Then, a whole pizza, a VSA meeting, a crappy play, and a dinner and a movie later, combined with a lack of sleep the previous 5 nights really made that little thing on Thursday bad. Real bad. It turned out to be a stomach flu. So not only was my weekend schedule flushed away, well, you can imagine what else was being flushed away. At least it was all happening Friday night rather than the night before midterms.

So I've pretty much been in bed the last 36 hours, fighting this stomach flu and headache. And I'm feeling much better than I did. Some things I've learned? Well, all that thinking I did while doing nothing in bed made me realize how dumb my proposed topic was to be for my poli sci class. Pepto-Bismol is much better in liquid form than in tablet form. You can never have too much toilet paper in your place. If your stomach doesn't feel right, don't go out and try to eat a large meal. And ultimately, get at least as many hours of sleep per night as fingers on your hand.

So being stuck here leaves me with not much to talk about. I did get a card from the commencement folks writing that the keynote speaker at this year's graduation will be Ted Koppel, host of ABC's Nightline. You know what? That's a half-decent speaker to get. Will it get me to go to commencement? Eh. I don't know. I do have a final the next day.

Let's face it. Commencement speakers have been less than overwhelming the last couple of years with Olympian Jonny Moseley (who dropped out of Berkeley; how's that for a message?) and Leon Panetta (the chief of staff for Clinton; I know, you're still wondering who Leon Panetta is). And the committee set a pretty high bar for itself when they scheduled Secretary of State Madeline Albright and Attorney General Janet Reno in the years before that.

Koppel is a highly respected, award-winning newsman who has name recognition and should attract a crowd, albeit an educated crowd. You'd be hard-pressed to find probably 50 people of the graduating class who regularly watches Nightline.

The only black mark on Koppel? He graduated from Stanfurd, which itself has gotten Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor as its graduation speaker.