The funny thing is, I was one of those who left P2Pool ... then found the block on another P2Pool node...
Right after the back-to-back 4 day droughts (right before the last horrible 8-day one) I decided to split up my total hash rate off of just P2Pool to diversify. I tossed about an equal 1/3 each P2Pool, Kano, and NastyPool. Turns out I found the block with my miner on NastyPool which has been running about a week, after mining on my own node for over 6 months with nothing.
As with the past, I knew the pool would come back around and make up for itself, but I loathe the idea of "wasting" work, which wasn't a problem until recently when we went >3 days between blocks and shares started falling off.