Just got back from Mayo(west of Ireland). Had a great week. Gnome has been doing pretty well since I've been gone :)
The gnome-themes-list has become really active since I posted to desktop-devel inviting people to discuss Beautifying Gnome. Jimmac and Tigert are involved as well as Luca and Lapo who are all producing great icons. Jimmac has added XD2 application icons as well as XD2 OpenOffice.org stock icons. I'm going to be going away in less than a week but as usual I've got the ball rolling and am not longer really needed..