Home again, home again

I'm home. And I'm exhausted. Our trip went relatively smoothly, we saw everything we wanted to see and had a lot of fun. There were some interesting events while travelling though - including a huge sandstorm on the Desert Highway which led to a massive accident that we drove past minutes after it occurred, followed by one of our fellow passengers having a heart attack! One of our flights home was also delayed waiting for a connecting flight, which had almost the entire passenger list on it - consisting of people who proceeded to provide the loudest flight I have ever been on. This was particularly frustrating since we had gotten up at 1am to make our first flight.

So, interesting and exciting.

I'm now busy processing all the information and experiences I had while out there. I was surprised by some of the sites I visited, and thoroughly enjoyed that.

Didn't give up. . . might still live

Well, pursuant to my last post, I have indeed been running around getting things organized. Top of the list was visas, second was flights. Flights were particularly exorbitant because we were traveling over Easter weekend, though we seem to have mitigated that by flying out on the Saturday. Next on the list is a hotel to stay at when we arrive at 1:30 am. Once again, because it is Easter weekend, I am finding that any place reasonably priced is totally booked up, making this difficult. NOrmally, we'd just sort it out once we arrived, but since this is such a short trip and because I have a number of research goals I need to accomplish, I can't afford to have a slow or tired start. So I'm still looking to find some place that I"m happy with.

In other news, I had a meeting with one of my supervisors this morning, and we spent a good deal of time brainstorming over the various things we could do to measure smell ourselves. I think we may have gone a bit overboard, but I foresee some sniffing in my future!

Visa application - or - Why I want to quit before I start

I'm going on a research trip this month, and have a bunch of grant money coming in to pay for it.  Unfortunately, the money doesn't arrive until early in the month, so I haven't been moving very quickly on booking things like flights or applying for visas.  Now, it's a week before I intended to leave, and I'm running around like a crazy person trying to make up for the fact that i put things off so long.  I think it will be fine, but I could do without the extra stress.  

In fact, this pre-travel planning always makes me wish I was just staying home.  I love travel and do quite a bit of it, but every time, I just want to lay down and pretend it isn't there.  I guess this is why people go on all-expenses-paid tours rather than doing things themselves!

This is the same as grant applications, scholarships, and all the other things that an academic has to do in order to survive, and I dread it.  Ugh.