We promise not to bore you with too many mundane updates about David Yepsen, but the local newspaper in the recently departed columnist’s new hometown took the opportunity to check in with him after his first week as director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University, and, well, we hadn’t heard from him in a while.

In case you were wondering, it sounds like his new office is quite nice:

A row of trees and the bright blue sky are visible through the glass windows, and the room itself offers a spacious environment complete with shelving, and quite pleasing for Yepsen, the table itself. The office — his office, as of April 1 — offers a much different environment than the newsroom of the Des Moines Register, where Yepsen worked for more than 34 years.