Pretty much sucks.

Normally I keep the serious stuff out of my LJ, but I'm afraid this one's going to be pretty depressing. I'm not within 700 miles of anyone I'm close to, so instead of going to get a hug, I will rant at you all.

The good news: I finished my data analysis yesterday. Doesn't mean jack squat yet, but my excuses for not starting my thesis-writing are becoming less, and therefore I am getting off my butt and actually working. This is good.

The bad news: I can't get an earlier flight back to DFW, on account of it being Hallmark Holiday Weekend. Everybody's flying out to see their sweeties - I'd damn those internet romances, but it would be sort of hypocritical - and so I'm stuck with my original departure date, which is Saturday afternoon. So I have two and a half days of nothing in the rockin' city of Omaha, Nebraska. It was a balmy 7 degrees today.

The really bad news: My grandmother Annette had a massive stroke this morning. They don't expect her to last longer than a few days, but then again she might. She can't speak, and they don't know how much she's aware of, though the CAT scan suggested she's lost comprehension as well as motor control. So I am faced with the eminent loss - mentally, if not physically - of the last of my grandparents, and wishing I had made the time to go and see her when I still could. Earlier today, the report was that she didn't know anything, so there wasn't much point in me trying to make the twenty-hour drive from here; now ... well, we'll see. I may be making a road trip when I get home again.

This, then, is why I am on a computer in the conservation center/hospital of the Henry Doorly Zoo (interns and visiting researchers stay in the apartments upstairs), at midnight, blathering on in text to the screen. This sucks. Really sucks. That is all.

I see you your visited states, and raise you....

It looks really impressive until you realize the only place in Canada I've been is Niagara Falls, just north of the border. :P



create your own visited country map
or write about it on the open travel guide

Travel Plans

Okay. So in theory, my flight leaves tomorrow around 5 pm, getting me home at 9:30 or so. Gonna head to the airport early and cross my fingers that someone's travel plans fall through and I can snatch their seat on standby at the last minute.

But oh, the irony: The forecast for tonight through tomorrow in DFW calls for a mixture of rain, sleet, ice, and snow. Accumulation of the latter up to 2-3 inches tomorrow. The weatherman's been wrong before, but when I wind up in Houston because my plane can't land in Dallas, I am going to be ... oh, put out isn't the right word. Put out implies that I would NOT collapse into a ball of insane laughter on the terminal floor, and wind up being hauled off to the looney bin by the authorities. Which I would.

I'd change my name officially to Murphy, though.