(no subject)

I'm less excited about a potential Scotland trip this spring. I'm supposed to give my barbarian chicks paper there the first weekend in April, and boss/advisor man said I should look into what plane fare costs and the office would cover it. So I did, and reported back, indicating that Wicked Cheapness could be obtained if I acted with some haste, Iceland Air being good that way; he suggested that he'd rather wait to see how the paper turns out and could we wait until January after I give it at the Philadelphia conference? A bit vexed (especially as he has blown off a couple of advising meetings that might -- I say might, out of an honest view of my work pace -- have sped along the paper-writing process), I pointed out that time was of the essence. He finally said he'd cover half my plane fare and more or less said that he'd just have to hope the paper was good enough for him to be associated with it.

So that sucked.

I grumbled to J., and we started contemplating just not going at all; if we were going to travel to Europe, and were going to pay for it ourselves because the requisite funding for my part of things was absent, there would be less pressure and the potential for more fun -- not to mention avoidance of hotel costs -- if we just went to visit friends of hers in northern Italy or my old roommate in Paris. And there would be precedent: J. last visited those friends in Italy two years ago when funding for an overseas conference where she was going to present a paper fell through, and she applied the same logic.

Now a new complication: Even as I wrote the above, The Man has just come into my office (necessitating a quick "close window") and cheerfully informed me that his contribution toward my Scotland plane fare would be an early Christmas present from him personally, and thus not come from any office travel funds.

Sigh.

Also, I see I have an overdue book through interlibrary loan that's a week late. My fault, of course, for not paying attention to the due date, but if they're going to send overdue notices at all it would be more useful if they didn't wait for a whole week (being a rather oblivious library borrower I know that notices are usually sent the day after a book is due) and then send it to my office, where the books aren't, and where I have never before received any correspondence from the library, to arrive the day before a major people-are-out-of-town weekend. So the book can't be back in the warm embrace of the ILL office before Tuesday.

Hello big fine. I guess it's a good thing I just got my Stafford loan.