Back in Montreal, back in Austria

I've been back in Montreal for a week now.  It's starting to feel less strange, being back.  My travels seem quite remote now.  Was I really bicycling down the Danube just two and a half weeks ago?  Was I really working in a summer palace in Austria for the past three months?  Was I really hiking in the Alps a week and a half ago?  (OK, that last one is easier to believe, since I've only just stopped aching from it :->).

Life has been a flurry of craziness since I got back.  Bills, car repairs, meetings at school.  The biggest craziness has been making plans for the next six months of my life.  I managed, after much ado, to schedule my PhD qualifying exam for November 22.  Once that was scheduled, I could then make plans to attend conferences (one early December, one mid-December).  Once I had that pinned down, I could make my plans for returning to Europe.  I've been invited back to do the work necessary (analysis and writing, mostly) to turn my summer research at the YSSP into a peer-reviewed publication.  Very exciting — this will be my first publication as an evolutionary biologist!

But not my first peer-reviewed publication ever; a paper just came out from my organic chemistry research at San Jose State when I was an undergrad.  I'm not first author on it, but since it's not in my field, it doesn't matter much anyway. The cite: Brook D.J.R., Richardson C.J., Haller B.C., Hundley M. & Yee G.T. (2010). Strong ferromagnetic metal-ligand exchange in a nickel bis(3,5-dipyridylverdazyl)complex. Chemical Communications, 46, 6590-6592.

But I digress.  Returning to Europe!  I'll be there from December 5th to February 19th.  Keewi will mostly remain in Montreal, but will visit me for two and a half weeks.  So!  If anybody reading this is going to be in Vienna over the winter, let me know!  I don't know whether I'll do any more blog entries when I return; that depends on whether anything exciting happens to me.  This may be my last entry in this blog, therefore.  If so, then farewell!  Adieu!  Auf weidersehen!  Good night!