These first weeks of new school term at Stormont have been eventful enough. For light relief there's been the business of a planning application for a new visitors' centre at the Giant's Causeway, Fionnuala O Connor.
Behind closed doors this weekend the DUP may be chewing over how well or otherwise their various representatives handled the matter.
The public reaction was to barrel through questioning with an edge of contempt and utter self-assurance. The party may be dominant at last, safe in the knowledge that it has not only overtaken but crushed the Ulster Unionists. But bluster towards questioners on the model of the old-style, unsmiling Ian Paisley kept up morale and browbeat critics throughout the underdog years.
The habit lingers.
Several senior Sinn Féiners, meanwhile, have clearly been struggling with their own reactions to the tragedy of Harry Holland, the veteran republican stabbed to death protecting his work van outside his home in west Belfast, his family connected by friendship and activism of various kinds to Gerry Adams among others.
Theirs is a tightly-knit society unnerved by high levels of vandalism and juvenile crime. Some are just beginning to think about relating to the police service west Belfast needs so badly. In the aftermath of the killing Adams led a delegation to the nearest police station and issued a statement - pitched somewhat awkwardly between complaint and petition.
Sign enough of the times: maybe also confirmation that the once-assured Adams gravitas is no more. Routed in the aftermath of Dáil defeat, it may be impossible to recapture in a Stormont where the Sinn Féin leader lacks a role and must watch his deputy leader play Deputy First Minister, smiling easily all the while at the DUP leader.
Yet through farce and tragedy alike, the abiding sense is of politics "bedding down". Shifts inside several parties are difficult enough to measure, but unmistakeably happening. What is equally unmistakeable is a unanimous will to make Stormont work.
Rattled Ulster Unionists and the SDLP smart at their loss of status and are prey to self-questioning, to different degrees, about how or if they will be able to regenerate. They also want powersharing to last. But adjustment to the new era has begun, among those who support it and those still opposed. The various voices inside unionism seem at cross-purposes to date, from ex-DUP councillors looking to the DUP's disaffected MEP Jim Allister for leadership, to the various suggestions for pacts and even a merger between the two unionist parties. The caution of Allister's "a work in progress" seems wise.
As for the prospect of a reintegration of unionism, Ulster Unionists for the most part hate the DUP as much they are loathed in return. They may well meet to talk about an election pact to maximise votes, as the DUP suggests.
But previous pacts have rarely lasted, and have had no effect on mutual antipathy. The UUs will have to regenerate from within, or be absorbed in another round of election defeats.
Awareness of how far they must travel perhaps helps explain the sharp UU response to the Bertie Ahern noises about Fianna Fáil exploring the road north, Sir Reg Empey insisting that the Taoiseach's announcement might so shake unionist confidence in the new deal that it could postpone devolution of policing and even deter loyalist decommissioning. Party backroom boy Alex Kane was more graphic in a speech in Edinburgh. The Celtic Tiger had now been joined by the Republican Wild Boar, he said, going one better than his leader by claiming Ahern's "move could have very serious, dangerous and violent consequences".
It was another reminder, if Ahern needs it, that many unionists will only think of him as friendly and unthreatening for so long as he suggests that northern powersharing is the limit of nationalist ambition. It might be closer to reality to visualise the Fianna Fáil leader as somewhat unsighted on nationalism as an ideology. Sticking it to the Shinners might be about the height of it.
Having taught Adams and co a lesson in the election, why not give them another rattle - even if the plan never remotely approaches absorption of the SDLP and places at the Cabinet table on both sides of the Border, the Sinn Féin dream until a few months ago?
The prospect of a 32-county Fianna Fáil, no matter how "gradually and strategically" Bertie promises it will be tackled, clearly does not stimulate unmixed joy in every SDLP heart.
For a start some have always leaned more towards Labour than Fianna Fáil. More firmly believe that the SDLP has its own integrity and northern character.
Having to reorganise and recoup after a bad spell is hard enough. Dermot Ahern's supposedly reassuring "we see the SDLP as friends of ours" will bring only wry smiles to those who hear talk of mergers as an admission of final defeat.