To further address some questions:

If you are in the habit of looking at profiles, you may notice that the registration date on my current membership is 9/17/08, not 11/29/08.  I originally created the second membership as a non-moderator user, simply to check on the look of the board and make sure things appeared correctly.  The board "looks" different to me as a moderator, and I wanted to make sure things that were done appeared correctly from the perspective of the general user.

The reason I restored my participation using that second membership is because it was easier and faster for Ben than if I re-registered.  Any membership, once deleted, cannot be restored by anyone, including Ben.  It is always necessary to use a different account.