Last year at UC Davis, I spent around four hours a day, Sunday through Wednesday, in a basement.

The California Aggie, our student newspaper, has its office down there, and my “office” was in there. My “office” was a desk, and said desk had treasures deep in its drawers like student government budgets, old notes from editors pre-millennium, and deodorant.

I’m the first to admit that I miss the basement.

It was home! Even though I was diligently working only for a few hours there each day, I returned on days off and even nights to hold extra meetings or get some quiet studying in. And of course, I was working around the clock from my handy Droid, too.

So, being here in Brussels where there isn’t a story I should be writing, editing or helping someone with at every hour of every day is… strange.

It’s great! Don’t get me wrong. The break is appreciated. When my friends at The Aggie were stressing out about hiring and training and so on in the spring, it felt so refreshing to just be done.

But I intend to return. The first thing I do when I visit Davis in May might just be a trip to the basement. Where else am I going to go? It’s not like I had friends or a life or anything.

Consider this the start to my comeback: a weekly column on page two, every Thursday, starting yesterday.