This is the equivalent of "unplug it, wait 5 minutes, then turn it on" - but - have you tried de-activating Pods and then re-activating?

What items disappeared? Perhaps the plugin that re-appeared is conflicting in some way, so you might try de-activating as well and see if the problem clears up.

I tried deactivating and re-activating my plugins, one at a time, but nothing changed. I'll give it another shot today. The settings that reappeared were for the Thesis theme, so I'll try switching themes, too, while I'm at it. Fingers crossed!

Bingo! When I deactivated the Thesis theme, the Pods menu items reappeared, so at least I know that's what's causing the problem. Now I just need to figure out how to resolve the conflict.

Fixed in 1.9.0

Thanks for fixing instead of taking a political stance against Thesis support : P