Vacation list not accomplished:

Get together my receipts for reimbursement for various trips last spring, with the cover letter, prepared to mail in when I get back to work.

Finish reading my master’s student’s manuscript – no urgency, but this is calm time and later will not be.

Nag my Ph.D. student to get the version of our paper she sent out to her thesis committee so we can work from that draft for the version we’ll submit to a journal shortly.

Prepare an oral presentation for a conference at which I had until this week believed I should prepare a poster.

Vacation list accomplished:

Booked an airplane ticket to said conference.

Sent five postcards, including a thank you to my former labmates in Toulouse.

Saw a few old friends. Four couples, one of whom became a legal entity during my stay, and three others. Bought a new pair of expensive shoes for the wedding – Dr. Isis would have been proud of me – and danced in them.

Saw a couple of movies on a big screen. Watchmen, and Julie and Julia. I won’t review them – it’s been amply done elsewhere, but they were entertaining and rather forgettable. After e-mail, Nora Ephron has found a new Meg Ryan to tackle the societal phenomenon of blogging. I also noticed that the trailers chosen between the twenty minutes of ads and the movie, happily about two successful marriages, were all four of them about failed marriages and how women and men can’t talk. Is this a generational thing?

Saw some things on a smaller screen. The wonderful Chinese Postmen in the Mountains, Il Postino, A River Runs Through It, a couple episodes of M*A*S*H.

Visited Salem and found out what “parce” means in Latin.

Hugged my brother, who has recently relocated to the U.S. West Coast but returned for a brief visit.

Attended the Science Online London conference from a distance (as per last post).

Bought lots of American junk food and canned tex-mex ingredients to bring back with me.

Purchased some back-to-school items for kids. Not all of them. The rest, tomorrow, jet-lagged.

Saluted Senator Kennedy’s hearse as it passed by.

Verdict

Vacation is not for work, and I seem to have taken that to heart. Thank you warmly to my kind hosts in sundry places around Massachusetts. I’ll be back to full blogging procrastinatory glory next week, when work resumes.