There was one senator conspicuously absent at the beginning of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s markup on Thursday morning: Charles E. Schumer. The committee was slated to mark up a media shield bill, sponsored by the New York Democrat and about 10 minutes into the meeting, the senator was nowhere to be found.

Since the committee was short of a quorum, members waited several minutes for a few more of their colleagues to show up.

A few minutes later, Schumer arrived, a quorum was reached and the committee promptly agreed to hold over work on the bill until next week. After announcing that the bill would be held over, Schumer said he had a “good dog ate my homework excuse” as to why he was late.

“The showers stopped working in the gym,” he said.

Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy responded, “When Sen. [Dianne] Feinstein was chair of the Rules Committee, that never happened.”

That garnered laughs from the rest of the committee, as Schumer is the current chairman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration and has jurisdiction of a lot of Senate operations.

The last thing that could be heard before Schumer’s voice was drowned out by the chatter of others in attendance was, “I had to have someone stand guard …”