4:18 pm – Monday July 18th 2005

The long road.

Well, it has been some time since I wrote, and I shall complain about it no more than that.

At the moment I am sitting in my room at Salve Regina trying to mop the sweat from my body. It has been very misty all day here, which means that it about 100% humidity outside. I am lucky to have a room which has air conditioning, some the old building I stayed in last time lacked. Today has been good, which is nice since it makes up for how annoying Sunday turned out to be.

I woke up at 4 am on Sunday morning, and Dan was nice enough to give me a lift out to the airport. The plane left on time at 6 am and got me to Denver. I bummed around the airport for two hours reading “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”, and trying to keep myself entertained. I boarded the plane, and that's where the trouble began. The plane was completely full, and we weren't going anywhere. Then the pilot came on the intercom and said that some man had just walked off the plane, and so they had to find him, remove his bags, inspect the plane and so forth. That chewed up 30-40 minutes, so my hour to get to the hotel for the bus now looked very slim. We flew into Boston, and everything seemed to take forever. I had decided not too check my bag, and that may have been the vital five minutes. I finally grabbed my bag and then the hotel bus drove straight past me. I scrambled for a taxi, but by the time we finally got to the hotel, it was 5:05 pm and the busses had already left.

It turned out I was not the only one who had been left behind because of the late flight from Denver. There was another woman at the hotel trying to figure out what she was going to do. We paired up and got back to the airport, then we scoured a few information booths for possible transport options, but nothing was going down to Newport. We finally caught the public transit into the city, and from there caught a Greyhound type bus down to Newport at 8:30 pm. We picked up another person who was on their way there, and the three of us caught a taxi to the conference site itself. We were about three and a half hours late, but fortunately the registration desk was still open, so we could sign in and get our keys. I went to my room, had a shower and then crashed.

This morning for whatever reason, my neck and spine were really sore. I could hardly turn my head it hurt so much. I wasn't sure if it might have been the new bed, or possibly travelling all day yesterday which did it. I made it to breakfast, and sat and ate with Steve K. an old friend of my boss. My ex-boss from Miami was also there, so we politely said hello to each other. The lectures were good, but I was still suffering from a dearth of sleep. There was a conference photo and I chatted with my boss a little more, fortunately he is less fearsome than my imagination remembers. Then there were two more lectures after that, I asked a question or two, since that is one way of letting people know that you are there. Lunch was ok, and I am remembering people (and being remembered) from last year. I guess that is the way you get ahead in this system, just keep turning up year after year.

After lunch I put up my poster, and then retired to my room for the cool of the afternoon. I napped, but when I woke up at 4 pm, my neck was still really hurting. I'm pretty sure it is a just a muscle strain, so I'm hoping it will go away tonight.

I felt “sugary” though, this is what I call it when it feels like I've eaten way too much sugar, and I really loathe it. The opposite is when one hasn't eaten for a while, and you just feel sluggish because of a lack of blood glucose. Myself of course, I hadn't exercised for weeks and I'd eaten quite a bit of junk food. So I went for a run around the university, which you may have recalled was covered in a thick mist. Hence why I am sitting here until I cool off somewhat.

In a little while I'll head down to dinner (a salad only for me), and then there will be the evening talks. Tonight they will announce who won the poster presentations, the four prizes being the chance to present one's work. I put in my proofs, which look quite good from my perspective, but which are probably not the sort of chemistry which they are looking for. So I at least will not have to worry about putting a talk together.

This Friday will be another long day, but with a much happier ending. I'll get up about 7:30 am to leave here about 9 am for the two hours bus ride back to Boston. From there it will be a long haul flight through Denver to arrive in Oakland at about 7 pm local time. The day won't be over at that point, Bonnie and I will be catching the Bart down to Union City and then getting a lift across the Bay to Palo Alto. We will be staying with Kay and Pierre for the night and picking up a U-Haul truck on Saturday morning. We'll shift a few desks, bookshelves and other things from K and P's apartment and drive back up to Berkeley where we'll probably spend quite a bit of time trying to find room for it all in Bonnie's little room. Suffice to say, I'll be looking forward to just crashing out during the week.

Other thoughts. It's been almost 5 months since surgery in Thailand. I'm feeling ok physically, dilation is a pain, but not nearly as bad as before. It takes a lot of will power to make yourself do it. At work I just had my contract renewed for another year, so that is very good news for me. My boss was even nice enough to give me a 5% pay rise, which will hopefully help me to pay back my loan a little faster. The number of advertised academic positions is starting to surge, and so I have been starting to put in applications. This conference is a very good place for me to start asking people about the availability of positions.

Nothing much has changed back in Montana. The Spring was quite wet, and then since the start of July it has been very hot. So hot in fact that going for a run is not a good idea. Running is something which is good for me, since it keeps brain and body moving, but it's just so darn hot. I can't really afford gym membership since I am trying to get the loan paid back. Still I'm glad I spent the money, I feel a lot happier now. One day I might get around to posting those entries, but then again maybe not.

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